Whose Wife is She Anyway
by Motsie of Atlantis
Summary: G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues?
1. Chapter 1

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 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-5 (but I do have season 6 on order). I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 ** **A/N:**** Thanks S. and G. for working with me on parts of this chapter. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and see things in there that your bunnies have placed there but forgot to tell you about.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 1**

. . . . .

 ** **NCIS Mission Headquarters, Office of Special Projects, Los Angeles****

Callen arrived at the Mission early one Monday morning and found an ivory envelope propped up in the center of his desk where he couldn't miss seeing it. He picked it up and noticed that it was sealed, the only thing marring the pristine spotlessness was his name printed on the front, in beautiful calligraphy.

He picked it up and kept turning it over and over in his hands, wondering what it could be and from whom he had received it. He saw that Hetty was in her office and walked over there, still carrying the envelope.

"What's this?" the Agent asked his boss. Hetty always knew everything, so she should know what it was and why it was on Callen's desk.

"I have no idea, Mr. Callen. It arrived this weekend with a bunch of dispatches from Washington. It was addressed to you, so I placed it on your desk."

"From Washington?"

"I don't even know that. It arrived with dispatches from Washington. Whether or not this envelope originated there, I have no idea."

"I don't know of anything going on back there. If something big would be up, Gibbs would have told me. This," he continued as he kept turning the envelope in his hands, over and over and over, "this is a mystery."

"Well, I know one way you can find the answer to your mystery, Mr. Callen," Hetty said with a smile.

"And that is...?" Callen queried.

"Why don't you just open it and find out?" the tiny woman advised him.

 **. . . . .**

His mind flashing through so many different scenarios, he only half-heard what she said. All of a sudden he looked up at her from the envelope and asked, "I'm sorry, Hetty. What did you say?"

"If you want to find out what is inside the envelope, I suggest that you go back to your desk and open it up. Unless, of course, you want me to use my letter-opener on it?"

"No, Hetty, I'll take care of it," he said to her as he started walking back to his desk.

He sat down and stared at it for at least ten more minutes. There was something about it that made him apprehensive of opening it up. Call it a gut feeling, or whatever else you wanted. He just knew that once he opened it, this apprehension that he was now feeling would evolve into a full-blown case of foreboding for him.

But there was no other way around it. He took the knife that he carried in his boot, and, holding the envelope as far from him as possible, slit the top open, making sure that it was aimed away from his face.

He was a little disappointed that nothing happened. It didn't blow up. Nothing came flying out of the envelope to attack him. It just was an envelope, with two cards inside. As Callen looked inside, he saw another stamped envelope, and two cards, all of them covered with the same type of calligraphy on the outside envelope that announced it was a message for him.

Pulling out the larger card, he read:

 **YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO CELEBRATE THE WEDDING CEREMONY OF**

 **ZOE KEATES**

 **AND**

 **ANTHONY DiNOZZO, Jr.**

 **SATURDAY, THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF JULY, 2015**

 **BEGINNING AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON**

 **BANQUET AND DANCING TO FOLLOW**

 **HOTEL PALOMAR**

 **WASHINGTON, DC**

There was also a small, handwritten note on another card.

Hey, Callen, if you have found a girl you want to bring along with you, you're more than welcome to have her come. If you need an escort, let me know, and I will get you hooked up with someone here.

Tony

Accompanying them were two RSVP cards that also indicated their choices for the entree at the banquet and a stamped return envelope addressed to Tony.

 _My God,_ he thought, _somebody finally nailed Tony down hard enough to make him pop the question._

He checked his watch and wondered when it would be a good time to put in a call to Gibbs and find out about this mystery woman. He saw Hetty was covertly looking at him over the rim of her teacup, and decided that he would not place a personal call at work, because she might want him to justify it on his next expense voucher.

As surprised as he was when he found out the contents of the envelope, that underlying apprehension still did not go away. Could it be that another confirmed bachelor was going to bite the dust, and he felt the target on his back just get a little bigger? Or was there something else, more sinister, involved? He would know more after he talked with Gibbs.

 **. . . . .**

Throughout the day, all sorts of conflicting thoughts started going through his head. Yes, he was very surprised that Tony would finally want to settle down. He had long been as confirmed a bachelor as Callen was, eager to play the field, but very reluctant to share his life, especially his innermost feelings, with anyone. Callen doubted if Gibbs even knew how Tony felt about a lot of things. For all his fooling around, the man was very private. He used his humor to deflect any attempt to break through the armor plating surrounding his true emotions. In some ways, Callen had to admit that Tony was more like Deeks than he was to him. The two men were cut from the same cloth, but it was surprising that Tony had caved before Deeks had. This Zoe Keates must be quite a woman if she could get Tony to settle down before Kensi Blye got Deeks to put a ring on her finger.

Then he started to think of his own situation. Like Tony, he was no getting any younger. He enjoyed the relationship that he was starting to develop with Nell Jones. Somehow she had worked her way into his life so that he felt some part of his life was missing when she was not there. It was not just a sexual involvement, although the sex with her was fantastic. It went much deeper than that, down to his very core of being. He needed her to feel complete. Her voice over the com settled him down before the deadliest parts of the missions. She worried enough about him for the both of them, and could usually find some way to work around all the problems and smooth the way for him and the rest of the team. No, this little pixie had become a necessary part of his life. Maybe it was time that he settled down. It certainly was an interesting concept.

 **. . . . .**

 **Later that night || Callen's home**

Callen waited until he got home to put in a call to Gibbs. The Special Agent in Charge of the Major Case Response Team in Washington, DC picked up his phone on the second ring.

"Gibbs," he answered.

"You keeping everything in Washington in line, Gibbs?"

"About as well as you are doing out there in LA. What can I do for you, Callen?"

"Ahh... I got this invite from Tony. Is it for real? Has some girl actually found the way to put a ring on his finger?"

"It's for real. I've met her. She seems to be a good girl for Tony. Tony even invited Senior to meet her and he gave his blessing to their relationship."

"I never thought that I would see the day when he would fall so hard that he would actually propose."

"Well, you know, stranger things have happened."

"Yeah..."

"What's that supposed to mean...wait, does that mean that you're going down too?"

"Ahhh... It hasn't gotten to that level yet, but yeah, I think I have found someone that I could settle down with."

"Well, knowing your rule about women with their own handcuffs, I would presume that she is someone from the outside. I would really like to meet the one that has your heart in her hands."

"Actually, I think you have already met her. Her name is Nell Jones and she is the Intelligence Analyst here at OSP. She usually has a tablet or laptop in her hands, but she does have her own handcuffs when she goes out in the field."

"Short, little red-headed pixie? Smart, but looking like she just stepped off a college campus?"

"Her hair's longer now, but that's the one."

"Geez, Callen, you love to rob the cradle? She must be twenty years younger than you."

"Actually, it's only fifteen, but it doesn't seem to matter to her, and it certainly does not matter to me."

"You are bringing her? I have so many stories that I'm sure she would love to hear about our time in Russia together."

"I'll have to keep a close rein on her if she decides to come. Anyway, what else can you tell me about the future Mrs. DiNozzo?"

"She and Tony met while working a case. She's ATF. Don't know if she's going to stay there or try to transfer over to NCIS. Seems to be intelligent, of course, who's to say, look at who she's marrying." Both men chuckled at the comment.

"Don't know too much more about her, only that she seems to make Tony happy. Why don't you call him and find out if you have any more questions?"

"I think I'll just leave it at that. I guess that I see you then."

"Take care, Callen."

"You too, Gibbs."

 **. . . . .**

His next call was to Nell. Their relationship had started to blossom. Callen was certain that Hetty knew that they were beginning to be a couple, but so far, none of the other team members seemed to know it. The hardest one to keep in the dark was Sam. He and Michelle were so disappointed when their matchmaking efforts with Joelle didn't work out. They still were looking for a girl for their best friend, but they were quickly running out of options. Little did they know that Callen had already found her, and she had been working side by side with him all this time.

"Hey, Nell."

"Hi, Callen. I was wondering if you were going to call. You seemed pretty preoccupied all day long."

"That's a little bit about what I want to talk to you about. I found a wedding invitation sitting on my desk this morning. Tony DiNozzo, Special Agent at MCST in Washington, is getting married on the twenty-fifth of the month, and he has invited me to attend. He also put in a personal note that if I had found a girl by then and wanted to bring her along, I could. Otherwise, he could find an escort for me."

"Sooo," she teased, "You want to know if I am good with you going to this wedding and him providing you with an escort for the whole weekend?"

"What!...NO!...Of course not!" he exclaimed. "I was wondering if our relationship has gotten to the point where we could go together to something like this, and I could introduce you to everyone as my girlfriend."

"Well...I am a girl...and I think I am your friend...so if you told that to people, you would not be lying."

"You know what I mean. This "thing" that we have, that we are not afraid to call a relationship, unlike Deeks and Kensi."

"KAAA-LUUUNK" was the sound that Callen heard in his ear.

"Nell, is anything wrong? What was that awful sound that I just heard?"

"That, my dear Callen, was the sound of one of the huge blocks in your wall to keep emotions and relations away from your life falling to the ground. Now maybe others can begin to see the man that I love, the sensitive, kind, loving person behind the wall."

"Well, that has only come about because a certain pixie has wormed her way into my heart and showed me what love really is."

"Awww. You're so sweet."

"So, do you want to go to the wedding?"

"Do you know if anyone else from the team is gonna be there?"

"Don't think so. Nobody else has asked me about going and I didn't see any of Tony's invitations on any other desks."

"That's good. I still don't know how I want to break it to the team, especially Eric, just yet."

"That's fine. The only one who would have to know about it would be Hetty."

"Well, I'm sure that she already knows. Nothing gets past the little ninja."

"So, is that a yes, you want to come with me, or a no, and I get to meet some girl that will fill in for you that weekend?"

"If I hear that you are trying to replace me with some other fee-male, I will personally make sure that you and all your aliases will never, ever, see the light of day again," she said, with acid dripping from each and every word she spoke.

"You know what? I completely believe that you would do that. So I take it you are coming with me?"

"Someone has to keep an eye on you," she said with a twinkle in her voice.

"Do you want to make arrangements with Hetty, or should I?"

"I think that both of us should ask for the time separately. This way, if she doesn't know yet, like that really could be true, we won't give her any ideas."

Callen just laughed at that comment. "Okay. I'm going to ask for the time tomorrow. I'll leave you to make your own arrangements with her."

"Okay. I'll try to take care of it tomorrow too. I'll talk to you after I get it done."

"I will talk to you tomorrow then."

"Night, Callen."

"Sweet dreams, Nell."

 **. . . . .**

 **The following day || OSP Mission**

Both Callen and Nell cleared that weekend with Hetty and looked to spend it with each other in Washington, DC. Callen was still wondering who this girl was that Tony was going to settle down with, so he tried to find out any information that he could on Zoe Keates in the federal databases. He found only one picture, and it was hard to make out any features from it. Her file said that she started with ATF toward the end of 2010 and was in on several important cases. He sorta forgot about it, when a new case came in that afternoon. He did ask Nell to see if the couple was registered anywhere that they could bring an appropriate gift.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Tony DiNozzo is getting married. Callen is invited to help him celebrate this joyous occasion. But what happens after the ceremony was not what anyone expected. Will there be a 'happy ever after'? And who will be the ones to experience it?

 **. . . . .**

 **July 24, 2015 || Gibbs' home, Washington, D.C.**

Callen and Nell arrived on the afternoon shuttle. They had finished off a major case the day before and Hetty had given everyone the day off. The Agent and the Analyst decided to take an earlier flight and spend their extra 'down time' together in the hotel that evening.

Somehow Gibbs found out about their change in plans. He met the two of them at Reagan National Airport and drove them, not to their hotel, but to his home. He was hosting the 'stag' party for Tony there that evening. Nell tried to beg off, but the guys elected her a member of the 'good-ol'-boys-club, so she had to stay. But, since the entire evening consisted of steaks that Gibbs had sizzling on the grill, baked potatoes, and other side dishes, a few cold beers to wash the food down, and pleasant conversation, Nell was not made to feel out of place. Whenever Callen's name was mentioned, she perked up her ears and filed the story away for future discussion with the special agent, or use as blackmail with him. Some of the stories were really funny. Some of them caused a shiver of terror to run down Nell's spine. The biggest thing that Nell got from the whole evening was that Gibbs would fit in well with the Los Angeles team. He looked on Callen more like a son than a brother, and either of them would offer up their life in defense of the other.

The hour grew later and soon both Nell and Callen found that they were having trouble keeping their eyes open. Callen finally called Gibbs over and quietly asked him, "Hey Gibbs. Could you get me the number of the cab company. I need to get Nell and me to the Hotel Palomar, where we have reservations tonight."

"Why go?" Gibbs asked. "Stay here tonight. I've got the room."

"Nah," Callen answered. "I've already paid for the room. "Besides, we just have to walk down to the ceremony tomorrow. I know I've had a long day, and Nell had probably come into Ops even before I got to work this morning. Nell can sleep in tomorrow if we are there. You know it always takes the gals a little longer to get ready for these things than it does for us."

"You sure they are still holding it for you, they usually cancel reservations at 6:00 PM."

"I called them earlier, confirmed the reservation, and gave them my credit card number. I kinda knew that if we came here we wouldn't get back there early."

"Your bags are still in the car, aren't they?"

Yeah, we never took them out."

"Then grab your girl and we can go whenever you want."

"Thanks, Gibbs."

 **. . . . .**

Nell was half asleep when Callen pulled her out to Gibbs' car. He put her into the back seat and made sure that her seat belt was fastened. She appeared to fall asleep before he could get into the passenger's seat to wait for Gibbs to start the car.

About five minutes later, the two men heard this infectious giggling from the back seat. Cullen looked back at her and saw a huge grin on her face, but she still appeared asleep.

While he was still watching her, she giggled again, almost breaking out into a full laugh. She pulled both of her hands up to cover her mouth to try to stifle the noise but did not succeed. Her eyes remained closed, and Callen couldn't tell if she was still sleeping or not.

He reached his hand into the back and tried to wake her by shaking her knee. "Nell...Nell...Hey, Nell, can you wake up?"

Nell's eyes opened up as if her eyelids were on a roller device like the shades in a window. The young woman was still smiling and looked intently at Callen. She moved her gaze over toward Gibbs and then she broke out in a great big belly laugh.

"Nell, can you share with us what you found to be so funny?" Callen asked, himself starting to chuckle along with her.

Nell looked at him and laughed once more. She had a hard time trying to get the words out. "I think I was partially dreaming about the good time we had at Gibbs' home tonight."

"And that's what was so funny? I don't understand," Callen replied.

"No. You remember that when we got there, everyone had a vote on whether or not I was to be looked at as an honorary member of the 'good-old-boys-club'?"

"Yeah, They all voted to make you an honorary guy for tonight."

"That's what was so funny. I was dreaming that I had to use the 'little boy's room', and I got in there and tried to use the urinal. They were all too high for me to try to use, but there was one lower one off toward one side."

"Well, men's public restrooms usually have one or two that are lower to the ground for smaller children. That shouldn't have been that funny."

"No. But you should have seen all the physical gyrations that I was going through to try to use it. I even tried standing on my head. By the way, that didn't work."

"Nell, I think you are overtired. You are really getting giddy."

"I know, I really need to pour my body into bed."

 **. . . . .**

 **July 24, 2015 || Hotel Palomar Washington DC**

Early morning light had started to spill into the hotel room. Callen stretched and yawned, surprised to find himself slouched in the corner of the couch with his phone in his hand. He shook his head to clear out the cobwebs that still lingered there, and smiled as he remembered what had happened last night.

When they arrived at the hotel, one of the attendants helped unload all their luggage out of the trunk of Gibbs' car. Callen got Nell out of the back seat, and walked her into the hotel, sitting her on a couch near the bank of elevators. He went over and checked in and got their room keys. He picked up Nell and had the attendant with their luggage join him in the elevator, and they ascended to the fifth floor. He opened the door to room 521, and plopped Nell down on the couch, while he attended to their luggage. Rather than trying to get Nell to walk to the bedroom, he just picked her up and carried her.

Callen was the perfect gentleman with her. He helped her take off her dress and leggings, and then placed her in one of the beds. Even though he had told Gibbs that he was tired too, he didn't feel like going to bed. He took out his phone and fingered through the aps until he came to the Russian language one, and started practicing the vocabulary section. He must have fallen asleep there.

He checked on Nell and found her still sleeping, curled up in a tiny ball in the middle of the king-sized bed. He smiled at her before he went to get a clean pair of boxers and his toiletries to go take a shower.

After he was cleaned up, he dressed in his casual clothes, grabbed his keycard, and took the elevator to the lobby. Exiting the front door, he crossed the street to visit the bagel shop he saw last night when Gibbs dropped him off. He purchased a dozen assorted bagels, plus some strawberry and garden vegetable flavored cream cheese for Nell, and some plain for himself. Retracing his steps back to the room, he was surprised to see that Nell was no longer sleeping, but was rushing around after taking her shower.

"Morning, Pixie. Why are you in such a rush. I thought I would just let you sleep and went out to get bagles for breakfast."

"Don't know if I will have time for any. Abby called me. She and Ellie will be here in," she stopped for two seconds as she did her mental calculations, "seventeen minutes. They plan on taking me out for a spa day to get ready for Tony's wedding. Mani-pedis, hair, you know, the whole female thing. Then they want to get me a new dress."

Callen just shook his head, "Women, you gotta love them."

Nell slid her body next to his, and batted her big amber doe-eyes, "You're gonna give me your charge card to pay for it, aren't you?"

"Why do I have to pay for your spa day?"

"Well, Tony is your friend, and we have a reputation to uphold at OSP. You wouldn't want me to disgrace the team, or you, with the way I look, would you?"

Handing her his credit card with a sly smile on his face, the agent said, "I should have known that you would somehow turn it around to be all my fault if things went wrong,"

"Of course," Nell said with a giggle, "you are a man." With that she closed the bathroom door and continued to get ready to meet the other gals.

"Right," Callen said to himself, as he took two regular bagels and made them for Nell, one with the strawberry and the other with the garden vegetable cream cheese, and wrapped each of them up in a napkin.

He spoke to her through the door and told her what he he had done, asking her which one she wanted to take with her.

She popped out of the bathroom, grabbed the two bagels, and said both, as she ran out the main door, muttering something about slow elevators and only two more minutes before she needed to be down in the lobby.

Callen still wondered how she could do that. From the time she was a little girl, she could keep accurate time in her head. It was as if part of her brain held a stopwatch that she could set and forget. When she needed to know, she just checked it, to find how how much time was left.

. . . . .

The service was only an hour away, and Nell still had not returned. Callen started to get worried, but then he heard his phone ringing. Picking it up, he saw it was from Nell.

"Hey, Nell." he answered. "Did you find a dress?"

"Yup. I'm already wearing it. I'll be there in ten minutes, so you better start getting ready."

"You're not gonna have to do anything to get ready for the service?" he asked.

"All I need to do is have another one of those bagels that you bought to tide me over until the reception. You don't want my tummy to start making inappropriate noses, do you?"

"That would not be good. Okay. I'll see you when you come in." he said as he cut off the call and started to change into more formal clothing.

. . . . .

Callen heard the door open and started to come out of the bathroom, telling her, "Your bagel is on..." but that was as far as he got. He saw Nell standing there and time stopped for him as he took in her image.

They had done something to her hair, added to it and piled it into some kind of twisted bun wth a few side curls. The earrings were lacey filigreed silver, set with a blue sapphire. There was a matching sparkly sapphire bracelet on her right arm.

Her deep blue velvet type gown matched the color of the stones. It had long sleeves, a modest neckline, but looked like it had been painted on her. There was no back, per se, her skin was showing from the base of her neck to the top dimple of her ass cheeks. The gown had a long skirt, but there was a slit on the left hand side that went up almost to her hip. Callen wondered if she was wearing a high-rise thong, or if she was going 'commando' under the dress, because no panties were showing in the skirt slit. She had on pantyhose and silver open toed strappy sandals with a three inch heel. Over her shoulders she wore a silver-hued chiffon shawl, probably a gift from Abby.

Nell Jones had definitely grown up from the cute young girl Callen saw every day in Ops. This vision of loveliness standing before him could rival any of the models on the Victoria Secret runway. He watched her as she nibbled at the bagel while he finished buttoning up his dress shirt, slipped on his shoes and tied them, Going to the closet, he pulled out his jacket and slipped it on. He looked the true bad boy, dressed all in black except for his light blue shirt. Even though it was a much lighter shade than Nell's dress, both the colors complemented each other perfectly. it was hard to say which one of them was the 'eye-candy' that graced the other's arm.

Callen offered his arm to Nell, and together they went to the room in the hotel where the service was to take place. The hotel had its security protocols in place, with a portable metal scanner set up in front of the room entrance. Almost everyone that went through the device set it off and had to produce their credentials to prove that they were authorized or even required to have their service weapon on them. Callen had decided to leave his in the room, but Nell had hers in her small silver clutch.

The eyes of many of the guests, both male and female, seemed to converge upon them as they made their entrance, all of them desiring to be either Callen or Nell's escort. He let Nell have a seat close to the aisle. He knew that she would be more interested in seeing the gowns that the girls would be wearing. He, on the other hand, thought it was ridiculous to spend so much money on dresses that would only be worn on one day, and then be put away forever. Maybe it crossed his mind a little bit too, that Nell looked so stunning, it wouldn't hurt to show her off a little bit and gain some recognition for the West Coast office.

The two of them engaged in some brief whispering concerning the venue and the upcoming banquet and dancing. Before they knew it, the music began to play and the service had begun.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 **July 25, 2015 || Hotel Palomar Washington DC**

The service itself was different, to say the least. Tony's father, Anthony Senior, walked him down the aisle. Zoe was accompanied by her two bridesmaids, one on each side of her. A Washington judge conducted the service. Both members of the bridal couple must have testified before him in his courtroom because of his remarks to the couple. Neither bride nor groom had chosen to write their own vows. Both seemed satisfied just to repeat the standard ones.

Callen was using his 'agent sense' to follow the service. It would tell him if there was anything wrong, or something that he needed to take care of. But beyond that, it just allowed things to run in the background.

What he was thinking about was the fantastic woman seated right next to him. He started to imagine how different a wedding service would be if it were Nell's. Certainly the service would not be held in a hotel party room. It would be in a much more romantic, exotic place. The beach at Tahiti at sunset, with bonfires on each side giving off their flickering light, as night stole over the scene and Nell stood there in a simple white dress, with enough leis placed around her neck to cover her completely down to her waist? A snow-covered mountainside, the whole world bathed in white, with her dressed in a gown that had the slightest color of arctic blue to make her the focal point of the setting? A small green valley in Scotland, with a foggy mist covering the ground, and she comes forth, wearing a white peasant's gown of ivory eyelet lace, her hair braided into a crown around her head, and the fog clinging to the back of her gown, forming a misty train? The traditional white gown with a long train, a wispy veil over her face as she stands in the chancel of a historic Roman Catholic cathedral?

Callen could never see the groom standing beside her. He wondered if he was refusing to see himself in the picture because of all the internal demons he continued to face in his daily struggle with relationships.

All of a sudden the service was over and Callen was drawn back to the here and now, The recessional started, and Tony and Zoe started their married journey together by heading back up the aisle. Callen looked at the happy couple, and couldn't believe his eyes. It couldn't be, could it? It was – Tracy. Or else it was her identical twin.

She was Tracy Rosetti, or Tracy Keller when she was his CIA partner in Uzbekistan and he, not Tony, was married to the woman. It was for an undercover mission, but that was when he was younger and found that a female body warmed the bed much better than an extra blanket on those cold nights in central Asia. He never really understood how 'legal' that marriage was. After she chose the job over him and almost got him killed, she got a divorce. He was still upset that she got their dog, 'Buddy' in the settlement.

Five years ago she came back into Callen's life, taking over a Navy Recruitment Office and taking people there hostage. She needed his help in trapping an arms dealer who was trying to buy the SIM cards to control a batch of stolen Spike missiles. They caught Thomas Mason, the arms dealer. Tracy disappeared, along with the money that was transferred into a private account. Callen and Sam caught up with her in the Cayman Islands, where they arrested her and brought her back for trial. The last thing Callen had heard about her was that she was serving a twenty-year sentence in the in the female section of the Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. It was only a medium security detention center, but the reason she was there was because there were no high-security detention centers that house women in the country. By no stretch of the imagination should she have been released to be here today.

The usher finally came to their row and motioned for them to proceed to the exit, where the reception line had formed. Callen kept his eyes onTracy, as she happily introduced her friends and family to her new husband. Her eyes were always on the guests in front of them, and so she either did not notice Callen inching closer toward her or chose to ignore him.

After Nell introduced herself to the couple, Tracy looked up at Callen, but she had steeled her face to give no indication that she had ever met the man before. The Los Angeles agent just stared at her and asked her, "Treysi, chto bylo vashe opravdaniye dlya nego zamuzh? Tam dolzhno byt' kakoy-to prichine ne lyublyu." [Tracy, what was your excuse for marrying him? There must be some reason; it was not love.]

Callen could swear that there was a half second look of recognition on her face when he said that before she forced a quizzical look to come over her features.

Tracy turned to Tony and asked, "Do you understand what this man said? I could not understand what he was saying."

Callen apologized and told her, "For a moment there, you reminded me of a woman I used to know. We worked together for a while over in Russia. I was drawn back to that time and said to you, 'Tracy, is that you? It has been so long since I last saw you.' But, of course, you are not her."

. . . . .

Tony then introduced Callen to his wife Zoe and mentioned that Callen worked for NCIS at the Los Angeles office. Callen shook both their hands and congratulated the couple, Then he followed Nell over to the reception area.

Nell had chosen a table that was away from all the other guests and sat down there. As soon as Callen joined her, she looked at him and asked, "What was all that crap when you were congratulating the couple. It doesn't take a political analyst to realize that something was going on between you and Zoe."

"Didn't you recognize her?" Callen asked. "That woman's name is not Zoe Keates."

"Of course not," Nell answered. "She just got married. Her name would be Mrs. Zoe DiNozzo."

"Think back, Pixie. One of the first times you went out into the field with the team. A Navy recruiting station being held hostage by..."

"Oh, my god, That's Tracy Rosetti. The woman you were married to in...in..."

"Uzbekistan."

"But didn't they put her away for twenty years or so? She should still be in prison."

"The Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix. Should be. That's the operative word. Did it really happen the way we saw it or was it another CIA op that we were not told about? For that matter, was it Hetty that was running something that she 'neglected' to tell us about?"

"I don't think it was Hetty behind it. I would have seen that in her personal files that she gave me access to while she was being questioned in Washington by the Department of Justice committee."

"Do you think that we could sneak away for a few minutes, and maybe you could confirm whether or not Tracy is in the FCI? If she still is locked up there, maybe I can relax and enjoy myself. If not, we better start worrying what she is really after with this wedding. I would be afraid it would be as fake as ours was."

"We will have to go back up to the room. I think I can use my laptop to link up to the NCIS system here in Washington. We should be able to hook up with the Department of Corrections through the Federal Inter-Agency program."

"Let's go before things get underway here," Callen said as he grabbed Nell's arm and ushered her out of the room.

 **. . . . .**

Tracy had thought that she had seen Callen sitting among the people gathered to celebrate her wedding with Tony. But she had so much time and energy invested into this operation that she couldn't turn back now. Besides, she always wondered just how good she was. Ever since she first was teamed up with Callen in Uzbekistan, she was constantly told how good he was. She had made that one slip up of going to the Cayman Islands five years ago to enjoy the money that she earned, but that was enough. Callen and his partner were there to apprehend her. There was a trial and she was convicted and sentenced to prison in Phoenix.

But the boys from NCIS didn't know the whole story. She had been on a joint CIA-FBI case, to try to weed out some rogue agents from each of the two agencies. She only wanted Callen to help get a couple of them off her back when they were trying to kill her. Instead, he and the whole NCIS agency got involved in her cover operation. Tracy even made a couple of half-hearted attempts trying to rekindle the flame that once allowed him to worship each and every part of her body, no matter what time of day or night it was, in their rented flat in Uzbekistan, but evidently Callen had moved on and would not go that route. If he would have just gone along with her on that, the operation would have gone the way the Company wanted and she would have been able to continue to operate openly.

Instead, she had been pulled off the case. The official records showed that she was still locked up in Phoenix. If anyone wanted to contact her, the Company had several videos of her in the prison. She was supposedly allowed no visitors, because of her not getting along with other inmates after they found out she had been a Federal agent. She had to change her name again, and rather than take a post outside the country, she agreed to become a mole for the CIA in another Federal agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). That's where she met Tony again, and one year ago he became her target.

The CIA had gotten caught once more, operating within the territorial boundaries of the United States. They were one of the partners with the ATF, Phoenix Field Division, that planned and managed 'Operation Fast and Furious'. Illegal gun sales that were believed to be intended for the Mexican drug cartels had been sanctioned, so that officials could track both the sellers and the buyers. Supposedly there were 1,400 weapons that were lost by the ATF in Mexico. The reality was that the CIA 'requisitioned' those weapons and distributed them to various groups throughout Central and South America.

There was a huge outcry when two of those weapons showed up at the murder scene of United States Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, in Arizona. The agency tried to get their hands on the evidence and destroy it, but the agent that the CIA used was not able to access the physical property room and remove the weapons. This led to several congressional investigations.

 **. . . . .**

Not long after all this attention had died down, a new Columbian drug group, with the backing of that country's intelligence service, had tried to establish a foothold in the cities of the eastern seaboard of the US. From Miami to Boston, cocaine started to flood the markets, as this new group tried to be as successful as the old Medellín Cartel under its founder Pablo Escobar.

Two Marines from Naval Support Facility Anacostia and one drug dealer associated with the Columbians had a dispute about a drug deal about a year ago. A gun battle ensued, and all three of them ended up dead behind an old warehouse near the docks. Dr. Mallard confirmed that both the Marines were killed by bullets from the drug dealer's weapon. Abby traced the weapon that the Columbian used back to the 'Fast and Furious' missing arms that had been distributed by the CIA. It should have been just a routine investigation, but both Marines were part of the service crew of the Presidential helicopter 'Marine One'. The outcry for new congressional investigations could be heard everywhere.

The CIA worried that these investigations might disclose their involvement in these operations. No one was going to sweep this under the rug. They would continue to dig until they got to the bottom of things. And there they would find the CIA operating illegally within the United States. They had to do something to protect their own butts. Tracy was given the undercover assignment to try to remove all evidence that would link the murder weapon with the 'Fast and Furious' operation.

The ATF agent had observed all of the members of Gibbs' team and settled on Anthony DiNozzo as the one to pursue. This became easier when ATF teamed up with NCIS to try to find the link of the drug dealer to the Columbian drug group through the contraband weapon. Tony and Tracy were each assigned as the lead agent of their organization to work together on this assignment. When she started dating Tony seriously, she also became a familiar face in the NCIS bullpen at the Navy Yard. No one questioned her sitting at Tony's desk, even when she started checking the ATF website on Tony's computer.

The woman had originally planned to go on her honeymoon with her new husband, then, while he was off on a case, send the order to the NCIS evidence room to destroy the weapon in question. Under Tony's name, she would claim that they had enough electronic evidence to prove their case, so the physical evidence was no longer needed. After that, she would install a backdoor into the system that would allow a CIA computer expert to search for all electronic references to the weapon and permanently remove them. Her part in the operation would then be over, and she could go on to bigger and better things.

Unfortunately, seeing Callen at the wedding changed all these plans. If he would start nosing around, he might stop her before she completed her assignment. She had to figure out some way to do it today.

 **. . . . .**

 **A/N:** \- This whole story came into being when I noticed that the actress, Marisol Nichols, who played Callen's ex-wife Tracy Rosetti in Season 2 Episode 6 - 'Standoff' on NCIS: Los Angeles, is the same actress who plays Zoe Keates, Tony DiNozzo's latest love interest on NCIS. The plot bunnies could not leave that fact alone and this story emerged. **  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-5 (but I do have season 6 on order). I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 ** **A/N:**** Thanks Susan for the idea for parts of this chapter. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and see things in there that your bunnies have placed there but forgot to tell you about.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 4**

 **July 24, 2015 || Hotel Palomar Washington DC**

Callen and Nell arrived back in their room and Nell immediately went to her laptop. It took a few minutes before the computer servers in Washington confirmed her identification and password as being a legitimate one for the NCIS system. Immediately after this acknowledgment screen, the screen turned bright red with the warning message that they were trying to access these servers through an unsecured network. Only the general information that was accessible to the general public would available to them.

"Is that going to be a problem for us?" Callen asked.

"No. We are just going to use this server to access the Department of Corrections network. I figured that it might carry a little more weight if it looked like the request came from NCIS rather than have them guess if you or I were actually agents."

"I knew there was a reason why I had a smart girl like you along with me."

By this time, Nell had already been transferred to the DOC and had placed her request to speak with the Warden at the Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix.

A uniformed guard appeared on her screen.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. I'm Sergeant Jocelynn Wolf. How may I help you?"

"Good afternoon, Sergeant. My name is Nell Jones. I am a political analyst with the NCIS Office of Special Projects in Los Angeles. I am here in Washington with our Special Agent in Charge G. Callen, and we need to speak to the warden to confirm some information."

"Since this is the weekend, Warden Philip Bently is not available right now. The person in charge right now is the assistant warden, David Gibson."

"He should be able to provide the information that I need. Could I please speak with him?"

"He is not in his office at the present moment. I will track him down and connect you to his computer in about five minutes."

"Thank you. I will wait."

While they were waiting, the two of them discussed everything that they needed to find out from the assistant warden.

"I want nothing less than for them to set up a link with her in her cell that I can talk to her face to face. I want them to prove to me that Tracy Rosetti is still locked up in her cell in Phoenix, and I was mistaken when I thought she and Zoe were the same person."

"Okay... I will ask. You might have to get on and back me up to get it done, though."

"Don't worry. Just put me on if you need to and they will find out how well I have the back of my team members."

 **. . . . .**

Assistant warden David Gibson's face appeared as he was linked into the call. The man looked a little haggard as if this was the last thing in the world he wanted to do right now. He must have remembered that Nell and Callen could see him because he quickly put on his institutionalized smile as he asked, "And how may I help the members of ... I'm sorry, what Federal agency did you say you were with?"

Nell offered the standard explanation, "NCIS, Navy Criminal Investigative Services, we are the ones who investigate crimes done for and against the military and threats against the country."

"And which of the men did you want to see?" the man asked, clearly perturbed that these people couldn't come here in person and he could assign someone else to take care of them.

"We don't want to see any of your men, sir," Nell said as sweetly as she could, remembering the old adage, 'You catch more flies with honey...' "It is one of your female inmates that we need confirmation on."

Gibson's head perked up at those words. It wasn't often that they had to deal with Federal requests about female prisoners. "And which one would that be?" he asked.

Callen gently pushed Nell away from the laptop. "Assistant Warden Gibson. I am G. Callen, the senior field agent of the Los Angeles unit of NCIS. The two of us are on an undercover assignment here in Washington. It is absolutely vital to our mission, and the national security of our country, to verify the whereabouts of one Tracy Rosetti. This woman is supposed to be locked up in your institution. I need confirmation of that."

The assistant warden typed a few keys on his computer, evidently opening up a new window. Scanning the information presented there, he turned back to look at the agent and told him, "Yes. She still is here. I can verify that fact for you."

Callen rubbed his hand through his hair as he said, "I'm sorry, sir. It's not that I don't trust you. But this is far too important to write off on your word alone. Could you have her brought to your office, or send someone down with a laptop to which we could link, that I could personally verify this information?"

"Both of those suggestions would be impossible at the present time. This inmate is being kept in solitary confinement for the next," he checked the other window that he opened on the computer, "seventeen days. She had been out in the exercise yard with a few other women. Someone mentioned that she had been a cop, and the catfight started. Whatever she once was, she knew how to fight. One of the other girls had a busted arm, and another had two broken ribs. She drew a thirty day solitary for that, and she is going to have to serve the full sentence."

"But a matter of national security is more important than roughing up two other inmates, isn't it? Can't you see how important this is?" Callen pleaded.

"Sorry, sir. I don't make the rules. I'm just paid to enforce them."

"Then how can I prove that she is locked up there?"

"I can open up our 'suicide watch' camera and hook you into the feed. That will show you she is alive and still behind bars."

"Please do that for me."

"It will take a couple of minutes. Then I can give you about ten minutes of feed. Will that satisfy you?"

"I guess it will have to," Callen said, resigned that this was about as good as he was going to get.

Nell pushed him aside again and typed a command into her laptop.

"What are you doing?" Callen asked her.

"It's just a hunch. Humor me?" she said, biting the tip of her tongue as she was deep in thought.

 **. . . . .**

A few moments later there was a bit of interference, as if someone had pushed a line feed plug into a connection and twisting it to make sure that it stayed joined. The scene changed to a picture of a cell with a female inmate behind the bars. On one side was a box with all of the particulars listed:

Tracy Rosetti

age 47

date of incarceration September 24, 2010

date of release September 25, 2030

security risk – great

Below this box was another with a digital day, date, and time stamp, showing that this was a live feed.

The picture was too small and grainy for them to make a visual verification of the person they were watching. This woman was shown to be walking back and forth in her cell, finally laying down on her bunk with her face to the wall.

The courts said that this should be Tracy. The assistant warden said that this was Tracy. The electronic surveillance program said that this was Tracy. With all of this assurance, why was there this nagging feeling deep within the pit of Callen's gut. He was sure it was not hunger even though they hadn't had their meal at the reception. And what was the 'hunch' that Nell had?

After ten minutes, there was the same type of interference again, and Assistant warden David Gibson's face again appeared.

"I trust that you got the proof that you needed?" he half asked, half told them.

"You really couldn't tell if that was really her. Don't you have a better angle, or can't you zoom in to make a positive identification?" Callen asked.

"We know who is in each and every cell. We don't need the cameras to tell us who they are. The cameras are only turned on when we worry about the mental condition of a prisoner. If they are put on suicide watch we use them to monitor them. We need to see what they are doing, not who they are."

"Could we send someone to interview her in her cell?"

"She is in solitary confinement, she is allowed no visitors until that time is up. As I told you before, that is the best that we can do for you."

Callen sighed deeply, wanting more, needing more information on which to base his actions, but knowing that this was all that they were going to get. "Thank you, sir," he said as the call ended.

Nell made a few more keystrokes before she turned off her laptop and packed it into her bag. She looked at Callen and told him, "We had better get back to the reception. They will serve the meal in sixteen minutes."

Callen still could not figure out how she did that, kept perfect time in her mind. But he never doubted the accuracy of her temporal statements. He did once, on a bet, and ended up handing a fair sum of money over to her when he lost. He was surprised when she grabbed her bag to take it along with them.

"You're taking your laptop?" he asked her.

"Yeah. There is something I need to look at after the meal," she told him, an uncertain look coming over her face.

"Okay, bring it along. If it can help clear this up, I'm all for it." Callen told her.

 **. . . . .**

The two of them got back to the banquet hall in time to sample the Hor D Oeuvres before they were taken away for the dinner service. Each of them got a little plate and Nell placed a few mushroom spring rolls on it and little puff pastries that had red wine braised beef inside. Callen took a few of the puff pastries and the garlic shrimp and romesco.

They noticed that there was assigned seating for the banquet. They looked around for empty places at tables and saw two spots left at one table. Callen steered Nell toward it and found that it was indeed the places assigned to them. Their dinner partners for the evening would be Dr. Mallard and Abby Scuito, Jimmy and Breena Palmer, and Eleanor Bishop and her husband, Jake Malloy.

Abby saw him and jumped up and ran to give him a hug. "G. Callen! You came."

He waited until she released him, then held her at arms' length, "Abby Scuito, of course, I did. Where else would I be on Tony's big day?"

"And who is this lovely creature that is with you?" Abby asked, as if she didn't know.

"This is Nell Jones, our political analyst at OSP, and a lady that I think that I am in love with. She joined the unit maybe a year after you visited us out in Los Angeles."

Abby looked at Nell and started shaking her head, "I think the end of the world is coming very quickly. First Tony gets married, and now G. Callen has a girlfriend. But seeing how beautiful she is, the only question I have is, 'how come you two aren't married yet?'"

Nell was starting to blush very badly. No one besides Callen ever thought she was beautiful.

Abby made the introductions for everyone at the table.

Callen looked at the seating arrangement and frowned slightly.

"Dr. Mallard, would you and Abby mind changing places with Nell and me. The agent in me always wants to sit with my back to the wall so I can keep watch over the whole crowd. I don't expect any trouble here, but it would just feel better for me if I could sit where you are."

"Certainly, my boy. That would be no problem. Having worked with Jethro for a number of years, and knowing all of his rules, I can understand these little foibles that people, especially in your line of work, can develop."

Callen also did not tell the doctor that from his new seat he could keep an eye on Tracy up at the head table. He knew she was here and not locked up in Phoenix. The agent didn't expect her to attempt anything here with all these people present, but since he didn't know what she was trying to do, he was preparing for almost anything.

The meal was extremely good. Their first course was spinach and frisse, with Roquefort cheese, apples, candied walnuts and balsamic dressing. For the main course Nell had chosen the roasted Amish chicken with prosciutto, braised greens and Madeira mushroom sauce. Callen had chosen the grilled strip loin, with portabella mushrooms, roasted fingerling potatoes, and red wine jus. Following the meal, both of them visited the gourmet coffee station. Callen just had a regular coffee with a little bit of creamer in it. Nell had a cup of regular with house made hazelnut syrup and raspberry flavored whipped cream with sprinkles. Both of them took several of the miniature cookies back to their table. Nell's first sip of her coffee left some whipped cream on her upper lip. Callen grabbed his napkin to wipe it off her face. As she closed her eyes, waiting for him to do this, he bent down and gave her a kiss, his tongue removing any trace of the whipped cream,

Nell looked at him and in her best Hetty imitation said, "Oh, you cheeky boy."

Callen smiled ear to ear as he responded, "Yup. I sure am."

 **. . . . .**

The after dinner conversation was lively. Jake kept asking Nell about the work that she did for NCIS and trying to compare it with what he and Ellie had done for the NSA. He was very envious of her when he found out she worked on so many different types of cases while he was stuck doing detailed analysis in only one or two areas. Ellie was surprised that Nell spent her time divided between Ops and out in the field. When she was with NSA she never went out into the field. Even now, she was considered a probationary agent for her team. The way that Callen and Nell talked, it appeared that they didn't have anything to fit that category. When Nell was in the field, she was an agent; when she was up in Ops, she was a political or technical analyst. It seemed as if they expected her to do it all. And again, from what Callen said about her, she seemed to be doing it rather well.

The dancing had just started and Nell, Callen, Ellie, and Jake had moved to a table off to the side. Nell pulled out her laptop, and brought up the video of the woman who they claimed to be Tracy that she had recorded. She watched it several times, something nagging her about what she was seeing.

Jake asked her, "Something about a case you are on?"

Nell answered, "Yeah, and I feel like something is just not right. I tell you what, can you and Ellie look at this and tell me the first thing that you feel about it?"

"Sure," and both of them moved over to where they could see the screen.

Nell ran the video one more time for them.

Nell looked at both of them and asked, "Gut feelings?"

Jake looked at her and said, "It almost looks like it was a tape that was run and not a live feed."

Ellie agreed with him, " Especially that type of interference at the beginning and the end. That's not just someone plugging into the system."

Nell realized that was exactly what had been nagging at her since she first saw it. She motioned Callen over toward her. When he got near, she said to him very quietly, "G. I think we have a big problem."


	5. Chapter 5

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-5 (but I do have season 6 on order). I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 **A/N:** Thanks Susan for the idea for parts of this chapter. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and see things in there that your bunnies have placed there but forgot to tell you about.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 5**

 **July 25, 2015 || Hotel Palomar Washington DC**

Jake and Ellie confirmed what had been nagging at Nell every time that she looked at the live feed from prison that she had recorded. The feed was not live. It had been recorded and fed to them as a 'live' feed.

She motioned Callen over toward her. When he got near, she said to him very quietly, "G. I think we have a big problem."

"What do you have for me, Nell?"

"I'm glad that I recorded this. There was something about it that has been nagging at the back of my mind ever since I first looked at it. I must have looked at it twenty-five times and never could put my finger on the problem. I showed it to Jake and Ellie and they found it immediately."

"It's not Tracy in the picture, is it?"

"Oh, it probably is. I don't think that she would have objected to being in that cell for that ten minute time period. The problem with it was that was not a live feed. It was recorded and fed to us over a live digital day and date-time clock. The clock was accurate, and we just concluded that the image was too."

"What gave it away?"

"While we concentrated on what the they wanted us to focus on, Jake and Ellie looked at the beginning and the end, where that interference appears. Just as I was supposed to do, I saw it as a tech simply plugging a line into a jack, to link us up to the feed. Those two saw something different, the beginning and end of interference, maybe dirty heads, of a recording machine that they forgot to edit out. Maybe they just didn't know how to do it. In any case, that's what it is. I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner."

"Don't feel bad, Nell. None of us did."

"But it was my job to find that out," she said dejectedly.

"And if she was on her own for this, you would have found it out. What neither you or I expected was that she must have had the backing of the CIA."

"So, what do you think was her mission here?"

"I have no idea, but I think we need to get Gibbs and Tony here to help figure it out."

 **. . . . .**

After eating their meal, the bridal couple went over to do the photos of cutting the cake and shoving it into each other's face. Tony and Zoe were then called out onto the dance floor for the traditional first dance of the bride and groom. After a short time, Senior and Zoe's mother joined them, and then they exchanged partners. The music changed to a little faster tempo and the DJ invited everyone else to join in the dancing.

Zoe joined her husband and pulled him off to the side, instead of going back toward the head table.

The newly wed woman batted her expansive eyes and told Tony, "I don't know if it is the stress of the whole day, or if something I ate today just isn't agreeing with me. I'm feeling a little queasy. Would you mind terribly if I went back to the room and laid down for maybe an hour? I think it would help and then maybe we can stay until the end."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"No. You stay here with our guests. I'll come back before you know it."

"Do you have your phone? I'll give you a call in an hour and check on you."

"You're so sweet," she said as she gave him a kiss. "It's up in the room. I'll put it on the nightstand next to the bed so I won't miss your call."

Zoe turned and went toward the exit while Tony was caught up with another group of well-wishers.

 **. . . . .**

Zoe hurried back to the room. She changed her clothes and headed for the stairwell to descend to the main floor lobby. Leaving the hotel, she hailed a cab and was driven over to the Navy Yard. After showing her credentials and an invitation to the guard at the entrance, she explained to him that Tony had asked her to wait here for him while he went back to his apartment for the plane tickets. The guard recognized her from her past visits so he gave her a visitor's pass and let her in to go wait in the bullpen.

Two of the weekend staff had been working at the desks of Tony and Tim. They looked when she got off the elevator and both had a surprised look on their faces. Zoe went up to Robyn King and asked, "Could you move over to Ellie's desk. There is something I want to check out on the computer, and I feel better if I use Tony's."

Robyn wondered what had happened and asked with just a small laugh to her voice, "I thought you would still be at your wedding reception. Your relationship has not gone bad already, has it? Don't tell me you are already looking for a divorce lawyer."

"No," Zoe answered, laughing out loud. "Someone at the reception told me about an even more romantic place for a honeymoon. We were gonna stay at a resort on Grand Bahama Island. But I was told that for just a little more, we might be able to rent a whole island all to ourselves for a week. I just wanna find out if it is available, and if we can switch our reservations this late."

Robyn asked her partner, Glen Marsh, "Glen, can I move over to Ellie's desk, so Zoe could try to make her honeymoon a little more romantic."

"Sure, go ahead," he told her. "Leave the general internet access open. Just close off the NCIS link."

"What's the name of the island that you are trying to rent?" Glen asked Zoe.

"It's called Little Deadman's Cay," Zoe answered. "I couldn't think of any better wedding surprise than to be alone with Tony for a week on our own island, rather than a big hotel-like building near a beach."

"Sure sounds nice," Glen said.

Robyn looked at her and said, "Some guys have all the luck," as she turned on Ellie's computer and got back to work.

Zoe turned to Tony's computer and accessed a travel site that she could pull up in case either of the two wanted to come and see what she was doing. Then she used the password Tony had given her to gain access to the NCIS internal links. The first thing that she did was order that the weapon that was being held for evidence in this case be destroyed. She typed the explanation that since the drug dealer did not survive, and there was enough electronic evidence on that weapon, it was no longer needed. She typed Tony's name on the authorization line.

Looking over at Robyn and Glen and seeing that they were busy with their own work, Zoe slipped a USB flash drive into the port of Tony's computer, and downloaded the backdoor virus into the system. Since it was written by someone who was a CIA computer expert, and had intimate knowledge of the government systems, it did not set off any alarms. It was so sophisticated a program, that even after it was activated, it might not register with the NCIS anti-virus programs. She pulled out the flash drive and put it back into her purse. Shutting down the computer, Zoe got up to leave.

"Were you able to rent it?" Glen asked as she walked past the desk.

"Talk about great timing. They were doing some renovations to the cottage and the dock and thought it might take all week. They just finished it today so this next week was completely open. I was the first one to ask, so you know where we will be all next week," Zoe said with a huge smile on her face.

"Don't forget to wear plenty of sunscreen," Robyn said as Zoe waited for the elevator doors to open.

"That is probably all we will be wearing throughout the week," Zoe said as the doors closed.

Zoe handed in her visitor's pass to the guard and asked if he could call her a cab. Tony had been delayed at the reception, and called her, asking if she could meet him at Reagan International. The guard was happy to assist the new bride in her request. He even went out the door and opened the cab door for Zoe, wishing her a happy honeymoon and a prosperous married life.

Zoe switched cabs three separate times and changed her coat and hat in an attempt to avoid being trailed. She bought a ticket on the Acela Express for New York City at Washington's Union Station. There she also bought a burner phone and called her CIA handler, telling him that the back-door virus had been installed and they could activate it at any time. Before she ditched the burner phone, she sent an e-mail to Tony's work address, laughing as she wrote it.

\- Hey, Tony, It's been fun. Maybe we should do all this again sometime. -

Zoe caught the next high-speed train, but only rode as far as the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport Rail Station, about a half hour north of the capital. A free shuttle bus took her to the airport terminal where she bought a one-way ticket on British Airways to Heathrow airport outside of London. After that, her trail completely vanished.

 **. . . . .**

 **July 25, 2015 || Hotel Palomar Washington DC**

Callen went to find Gibbs and try to explain to him what they felt was going on. The two men were arguing in Russian so that they would not disturb the other guests. Callen dragged Gibbs over to the table where Nell still had her laptop open.

"Just look at the picture, that's all I am asking you, Callen said to the older man.

"All right. I will look at your picture. But if I didn't know better, I would swear that you were seeing double from too much booze."

"The only alcohol that I have had was the glass of champaign they poured for the toasts."

"Where are the pictures? Let's get this over with."

"Nell, can you bring up the picture for us?"

Nell tapped a couple of keys and a picture of a woman with long hair and large eyes appeared on the screen.

Gibbs looked at the picture and said, "That's Zoe. Where did you get that picture of her?"

Callen nodded his head and again said, "Nell?"

Again the young woman tapped a couple of keys. Several pictures of the what appeared to be the same woman appeared, with differing lengths of hair, looking like they were taken over several years' time. One of the pictures was a CIA identification card from what appeared to be the late 90s. Another showed her in a prison jumpsuit.

Callen turned back to Gibbs and asked, "Are you sure that it is Zoe?"

"I'm not sure. It really looks like her. Let me get Abby over here and maybe she can make a positive id for us."

The senior agent looked for his forensic scientist and saw her on the dance floor. When the song was done, he made his way toward her and asked her to join the group at the table. When she got there, Nell explained the problem to her and showed her all the pictures that they had. Abby asked if anyone had a picture of Zoe. Jake remembered that Jimmy's wife, Breena, had a camera and had been taking pictures. He went to find her and see if they could get a photo of Zoe that they could compare.

Breena brought her camera over and Abby transferred one of the pictures to Nell's laptop. Then she accessed the NCIS internal links to her lab, entered the picture Breena had taken along with the one from the CIA identification card and ran a facial comparison on the two pictures.

After thirty seconds, there was a ding. Abby looked at the screen, completely surprised. She looked at Gibbs as she turned the laptop screen so he could see it. "I don't know how it is possible, Gibbs, but G. Callen is right. This other woman is or was Zoe Keates."

The screen of the laptop confirmed her words. A big red banner went across the screen from one corner to the other, with the words, "Identification - Positive" printed across it.

Abby looked at the people who were gathered around the table with a questioning look in her eye.

"Okay," she asked, "Who is this mystery woman that Tony has married."

Callen looked at her with an empty, cold-blooded expression on his face, and answered. "Her name is Tracy Rosetti. She was the woman I married back in 1997 when we both worked for the CIA."

Abby looked at him and shook her head as if she couldn't believe it. "G. Callen, you were married? I never knew that."

"Not too many people did. It was only for our mission in Uzbekistan, at least I think it was. It was a long, long time ago, and I'm still not sure what the CIA did to set up the mission. She almost got me killed over there. Damn woman is still complicating my life." he said as he got up to walk away.

"I wonder what he meant by that?" Ellie asked.

"She involved him in a mission to sell SIM cards for Spike missiles to an international arms dealer. Tracy tried to walk away with the money. Callen and Sam caught up with her in the Cayman Islands. She was tried and should be currently looking at fifteen more years in the Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix."

"Did you check if she is there?" Gibbs asked.

"They claim she is. Showed us a supposed 'live feed' that proved it." Nell countered.

"Except it was a tape, not a live feed," Ellie added.

"You sure of that?" Gibbs asked his probie.

"I am," both Ellie and Jake answered at the same time.

Nell took a slow, hard look at everyone around the table. "I have an even bigger question to ask."

"What's that?" Gibbs wanted to know.

"Who's gonna tell Tony?" Nell replied, almost in a whisper.


	6. Chapter 6

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1- 6. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 **A/N:** Thanks to several people for their help in the technical aspects in this chapter. You know who you are. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and help your bunnies hop along.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 6**

 **. . . . .**

 **Banquet Hall || Hotel Palomar, Washington, DC**

Gibbs never understood how he drew the short straw to explain everything to Tony. Maybe they thought that it would be easier coming from a man that Tony knew well and admired. Maybe they figured Gibbs had the most experience in marriages that fell apart.

"DiNozzo, do you know where your wife is?" Gibbs asked.

"Zoe? She said that she was feeling just a little bit faint and she went back to our room to lay down for a bit. That reminds me, I should call her and see if she is feeling better."

Tony pulled out his cell phone and pressed Zoe's number on his speed dial. After four rings, the call automatically went to voice message.

"That's strange," Tony said, "She didn't pick up. I wonder if I should go back to the room and see if she is okay."

"Why don't you take the probie with you?" Gibbs suggested

"Ellie? Why should I take her?" Tony wondered why taking a married woman into a hotel room to check on his new bride would be a good idea.

"You know. In case it's a 'woman's thing'," Gibbs tried to put it as delicately as he could.

"Oh...Right." Gibbs did have a point after all.

. . . . .

 **Honeymoon Suite || Hotel Palomar, Washington, DC**

Tony swiped the key card and opened the door. He entered the suite with Ellie right behind him.

"Zoe...Zoe, honey...Zoe, are you okay?" Tony called, each time sounding just a little more worried.

He went over toward the bedroom and knocked softly on the door. "Zoe, wake up, baby," he called out again tenderly, as he opened the door.

The bedroom was pitch black, except where the elongated shaft of light from the other room fell across the bed, and the empty wedding gown that lay on it. The bed hadn't been slept in. The adjoining bathroom was empty. Zoe was gone.

Tony just sagged into a sitting position on the bed. He looked from one side of the room to the other focusing on nothing in particular. The expression on his face showed how lost and confused he was.

Ellie got out her phone and put in a call to Gibbs. "She's gone. Left her dress on the bed and just took off. Tony's completely out of it. What should I do?"

Gibbs told her, "Keep him there. We will take care of the rest of the guests and join you shortly."

. . . . .

 **Banquet Hall || Hotel Palomar, Washington, DC**

Gibbs looked across the dance-floor for Tim McGee, Tony's best man. He thought that any announcement should come from him, now that Tony and Zoe were indisposed. He saw him over at one of the tables off to the side, sitting there with his fiancee, Delilah. They had danced a couple of times, Tim picking her up out of her wheelchair and just sort of moving their bodies together in one place.

Gibbs went over to the younger agent and explained what they needed for him to do. Tim just nodded and went over to the Deejay and asked to make an announcement. When the song ended, he gave the microphone to Tim.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you are all having a wonderful time. Please feel free to stay until they close the room down. The bride and groom have already slipped away to begin their wedded life. So enjoy yourselves, have fun, and make sure you get home safely. Thank you."

There was a bit of applause for the announcement, and then the next song started and the festivities continued. Tim looked to find Gibbs and figure out what exactly was going on. The MCRT leader asked Tim and Delilah to join the others at the table across the room where everything would be explained to them.

. . . . .

NCIS Director Leon Vance had been asked to join the group also. When everyone who still had not heard what had happened had been filled in, Vance called the front desk of the hotel and asked if there was a conference room available that they could use until everything could be relocated back to the Navy Yard headquarters. The hotel made one available for him and everyone was asked to move there.

Before the Director left the dance-floor, he called Lara Morgan to his side, and asked the nanny, "Lara, something has come up here. I am going to have to stay a little longer and take care of it. Could you please see that Jared and Kayla make it home okay, and go to bed?"

"No problem, Mr. Vance," the young woman said.

Leon took out his wallet and gave her some money. "Here. Take this to cover a couple of sodas from the bar tonight and your cab ride home. I hope to be able to get home tonight yet. If I don't, I will see you tomorrow."

"I will take care of them for you," Lara told him.

"Thanks so much, Lara." Leon then hugged his son and daughter, wishing them good night and asked them to mind Lara for him and he would see them in the morning.

. . . . .

 **Conference Room || Hotel Palomar, Washington, DC**

The conference room looked like an NCIS war council, which is pretty well what it was. Dr. Mallard had been sent up to Tony's room to see if the agent needed any medical attention after the shock he had suffered. Ellie was asked to do a preliminary examination of the room to see if Zoe left any clues for them. Then everyone sat down to try to figure out what Zoe had been after with everything that she had done.

The technological aspect, or actually the lack of it, is what caused them to move after fifteen minutes. Nell had her laptop, but everyone else was trying to work off their cell phones. Frustration was quickly setting in and Director Vance decided to move everything back to headquarters. Gibbs' team would help Ellie check out Tony's room, before joining everyone back at the Navy Yard.

. . . . .

 **NCIS Headquarters, Navy Yard, Washington DC**

Glen Marsh and Robyn King were surprised to see Director Vance, Abby, and two other people that they did not recognize come rushing out of the elevator. Glen looked at Robyn and told her. "Something big must be up. Shut it down. We'll go up to MTAC and continue our work up there."

Robyn shut down her computer and gathered up the files she had spread out over Ellie's desk. As she rose, Director Vance stopped them. "Just a minute you two. Did Zoe Keates happen to show up here today?"

Glen looked at the Director and said, "She was. She said that she was trying to upgrade their honeymoon package on Grand Bahama island. She said that she was able to get through to them and book a whole island for the next week."

"So she was working on one of the computers?" Vance said in disbelief.

"She was using Tony's computer. We left the general internet portal open, but closed the internal NCIS one."

He went over to Gibbs' computer and typed in a command. The fire alarm blasted three times and the scrolling news banner had the 'High Alert' label blazing below it. Automatic text messages were sent out to every team leader warning them to tell their team members what was going on.

"As of right now," the Director announced, "we just moved from normal to high-security level. We have no idea what Zoe did with the computer, if we have been compromised or not."

Vance then looked at Abby, "Can you tear apart Tony's hard drive, and see if anything has been added that shouldn't be in there? Just try to find out what she did while she was on that computer."

The young woman didn't say anything. She just went over to a drawer in the spare desk and pulled out a small tool kit and started to remove the hard drive from Tony's computer to take down to her lab.

Then the Director looked at Nell, and told her, "I need for you to find out everything that you can on Tracy Rosetti or Zoe Keates or any other name she ever used and who she was working for. I don't care how you get the information, just don't get caught doing it or have it traced back to this office."

Nell's eyes went wide open upon hearing his order. Never before had she been given tacit approval to hack into other government internal databases. She wished Eric was sitting nex to her to help, but she had done this a few times on her own. Nell strongly believed that her computer skills were the equal of anyone in the Washington office. Since she worked with Eric Beale on a daily basis, she probably had picked up a few skills and tricks from him that no one else knew about.

Vance finally turned toward Callen and ordered him, "Agent Callen, I need you to call Henrietta Lange and update her on the situation here. You will also inform her that I am going to borrow the services of you and Ms. Jones for the time we need to get to the bottom of this."

"Yes, sir," Callen replied and walked off to the side, where he pulled out his phone to place his call.  
 **. . . . .**

The phone rang three times before Hetty picked it up, "Lange. What do you need, Mr. Callen?"

"Vance wants to borrow Nell and me to find out who Zoe Keates really is and why she married Tony DiNozzo."

"I don't understand, Mr. Callen. Has Mr. DiNozzo married the wrong woman?"

"Nell and I think she is Tracy Rosetti, who should be in a Federal prison in Phoenix right now."

"I remember that woman. Is she not still there?"

"That is what we were led to believe when we put in a request to talk with her, but they said she was in solitary confinement and was not accessible."

"As of this moment, I will allow Leon to borrow the two of you. I may have you go out to Phoenix to check out the prison. I know that the Yuma office is assisting the Marine Corps West Field Office in a joint drug interdiction program along the Mexican border. I will check and see if an agent is available to visit her and verify her presence for you. If not, I will expect you to do the verification yourself. Is Director Vance there with you right now?"

"Yes, Hetty."

Callen covered the phone with his hand and called out to Vance, "Director, Hetty would like to speak with you," and handed him the phone.

"Henrietta, Agent Callen has filled you in on our little problem here?"

"Yes, Leon, he did. He also told me that you want to borrow him and Ms. Jones to help out?"

"Yes, especially Ms. Jones. She appears to be the lead on the computer end of this case and I don't want to waste the time trying to get one of our people up to speed going over the same material one more time."

"I understand completely, Leon. Would you like me to have Mr. Beale join her in her efforts?"

"Only if it doesn't impact on your present case load."

"We are 'on hold' status right now. The Marine Corps Field Office is conducting their joint drug interdiction program along the Mexican border and if anything comes up while they are doing that, we get the call. I would imagine everything would go back to normal on Monday morning, but I don't see any cases coming up that we need to work on right now."

"Well, since they are here right now, I would like Agents Callen and Jones to help out here."

A huge smile crept over Hetty's face when she heard the Director give Nell the title of 'agent'. "Ms. Jones?" the tiny woman asked. "You can certainly borrow her, but remember, Leon, she is mine, and I expect her back when this mission is done. As for Mr. Callen, he has history with this woman, if she is really is Tracy Rosetti. I would suggest that you send him to the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix, to make a positive identification on who the woman is that they claim is Ms. Rosetti."

"That sounds like a good idea, Henrietta. By that time, we might have this case resolved and he can head back to Los Angeles."

"So, Leon, do you want to tell him, or should I?"

"I'll do it, Henrietta. I'd sooner have him be angry with me. He doesn't have to see me every day."

"That happens all the time around here, Leon. It's something we both are used to." the little lady said with a laugh. "Goodbye, Leon."

"It was good talking to you again, Henrietta." The Director closed up the phone and gave it back to Callen.

"Agent Callen, I need you to travel out to Phoenix and make a positive ID of who the woman really is that they have locked up under the name of Tracy Rosetti. You will fly from here to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. A federal warrant will be waiting for you at the Phoenix Airport Security Office that will require the Corrections Officers to produce her. I will not accept that she is under solitary confinement and cannot have visitors. You are not a visitor and should not be treated as one. I need you to confirm who she really is."

"But sir, I have known Tracy for..." Callen tried to tell him.

"I realize that, Agent Callen. That is why I need you there. No matter how she's aged, no matter how she looks without makeup, you would best know if she is the woman in question. If she is, you need to inform both the MCRT team in Washington and the OSP in Los Angeles."

"But sir,..."

"I've made my decision, Agent Callen. You are the best person to send, therefore you will go to Phoenix, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," Callen said dejectedly.

The Director then turned to Nell and started speaking to her, "Agent Jones..."

"Ah, sir. I am only a political analyst. I am not an agent...yet." The last word was almost a whispered hope.

"Ms. Jones, for this case you will be classed as a temporary agent. You are the one that has done the most work on this already. I believe Gibbs has a rule about this," Vance added as he looked up and saw Gibbs standing behind her.

Gibbs had just come in with the rest of his team from checking out Tony and Zoe's room. He smiled as he heard Vance's reference, and said, "Yup. Rule number 38: Your case, your lead."

"You will be temporarily attached to Gibbs' team and take the lead in cyber aspects of the case. Anything you need will be made available to you. Ms. Lange has made it abundantly clear that I have to return you to her when this case is done. I'm afraid I am seriously going to regret having to do that."

Nell turned brighter and brighter shades of red as she blushed more with each new thing that Vance said about her.

"There's your desk," Gibbs said to her, pointing at one off to the side with only a computer on it. "Make yourself at home. Your LA protocols and passwords should also work here."

"Yes, sir. I know."

Gibbs' face had a look that was half question, half frown, as he asked,"What do you mean, You already know?"

"Well, sir, I sorta hacked into your system earlier today, and my password worked just fine."

Gibbs snickered and looked at Vance. "If that little lady out in LA ever wants to get rid of this one, Leon, I have the first claim on her."

"You might have to get in line, Gibbs," Vance said jokingly. "I might need her to set up her own team. You might be working for her someday."

Gibbs looked at the little pixie and remarked, "I wouldn't doubt that in the least."

. . . . .


	7. Chapter 7

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-6. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 **A/N:** Thanks to several people for their help in the technical and literary aspects in this chapter. You know who you are. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and help your bunnies hop along.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 7**

 **. . . . .**

 **NCIS Headquarters, Navy Yard, Washington DC**

After two hours of working hard on their assignments, Vance could see that they were getting nowhere fast. Everyone was emotionally drained from the events of the day, and all of them were still dressed for the wedding, not for an investigation. After he had seen everyone yawn at least once, he made an executive decision.

"Everyone, everyone," the director said louder the second time. "None of you are doing yourself or me a whole lot of good here tonight. Everyone go on home, we'll get a fresh start tomorrow in the morning."

Computers were shut off and files were gathered together and locked into the desk drawers. Slowly all the team members and the family members with them trudged toward the elevator, the fatigue showing in their bodies. Vance called downstairs and made sure that Abby understood what he wanted. When everyone else was gone, he turned the lights down to the overnight setting, entered the elevator, and turned to look once more at the scrolling news banner and the lit up notification of 'High Alert' below it.

"We will find you and learn what your mission was here at NCIS. I refuse to allow something like this to take place here on my watch," he vowed.

He waited for the elevator door to close so he too could go home and relax with his children.

. . . . .

Gibbs told Callen and Nell that he would drive them back to the hotel. Nell just silently got into the back seat. She was concerned with emotions that Callen was expressing. Once they were out of earshot of Vance, Callen let loose with his tirade on what he thought of the Director's dividing up the work.

"I know Tracy better than anyone here. I should stay here to help figure out what she did and where she went. This damn fool idea of sending me to check the prison cell is just a wild goose chase. The woman there, if there even is a woman in that cell, is not her. We all know it, so why do I have to go and get a visual confirmation."

"We gotta make sure," Gibbs said. "Vance feels that you are the best one to do it."

"The only thing that I'm sure of is that the CIA has their fingers all over this. They looked on her as one of their rising stars when they teamed me up with her. She just cared about herself, getting through the mission with her skin intact. She damn near got me killed and didn't seem to care one way or another that I was looking for her. She was sitting in the safe house all the time. She didn't know if I made it, and she just didn't care."

Gibbs looked at him and said, "You sound like you're making this personal."

"Damn right I am. We had to be smuggled out of the country because our covers were blown. She got sent back to Langley and I was shoved into a new operation in Moscow. I felt she played me, completely played me, just to get what she wanted. It wouldn't have mattered to her if I didn't come back with her. Maybe it would even be better for her. She could lie about the mission, and who would there be to contradict her?"

When they got to the hotel, Gibbs told them, "Clean out your room. You both are coming back to my place for the night."

"Why?" Callen asked.

"You will be closer to the airport to fly out tomorrow, and I can drive Nell in for work."

Callen turned to Nell and asked, "You okay with that, Nell?"

"Sure, whatever works easiest for everyone else."

"It's settled then," Gibbs said.

. . . . .

 **July 26, 2015 || Gibbs' home, Washington, D.C.**

The following morning Nell saw Callen on the phone, his bags at his feet. "Okay, that's a one-way ticket to Phoenix this morning at 9:57 AM. Thank you," and with that, he ended the call. Folding up his phone and placing it in his pocket, he looked up and saw the young girl had come down the stairs. "Morning, Nell. Gibbs has got breakfast in the kitchen," he told her.

"Morning, G. You all ready to go to Phoenix?"

"Yeah. Little good that it will do me."

The two of them walked into the kitchen where Gibbs was making blueberry pancakes for them. He looked up and asked, "You squared away?" to Callen.

"Yeah. 9:57 AM flight."

"You gonna call a cab? I can't get you to the airport and us to the Navy Yard ..."

"Yeah. I'll call a cab. You don't have to worry about me."

. . . .

Nell climbed into the passenger's seat of Gibbs' car to ride with him into the Navy Yard headquarters. As they drove away, she kept looking back at the house where Callen remained.

Gibbs saw her and asked, "What's the matter, Nell? Don't you think he will go to Phoenix?"

"Oh, he'll go, kicking and screaming. But he doesn't want to incur the wrath of Hetty."

"You care about him." It was a statement, not a question.

Her head snapped around to look directly at the agent. 'Of course I care about him. He is a member of my team. I care about all of them."

"I don't mean that. I mean you really care...a lot... about him."

Nell felt her body betray her in giving Gibbs the answer as her face grew red in a deep blush.

Gibbs sort of chuckled and told her, "Don't worry about it. He cares a lot about you too."

Nell wondered if Callen had mentioned anything to Gibbs. She couldn't think of any time that they were alone long enough for that to happen. So, in defense of their fledgling relationship, she asked, "And who or what told you that?"

Gibbs softly smiled as he kept his eyes on the road, "Nell, in all the years that I have known him, Callen has never brought a woman home with him to meet me. That alone tells me how special you are to him,"

"Gibbs,..."

"Please, Nell, call me Jethro. All my close friends call me that. If you are as close to Callen as I think you are, you deserve to be in that group right now."

"I don't know, Gib..Jethro. We got involved during an operation and it got very intense. Both of us decided to back off a bit, get to know one another, and build our relationship in a slow, normal way, rather than just some extracurricular activity."

"Boy, he is hooked." he said, silently laughing as he shook his head.

"Why? What's wrong with that?" Nell demanded.

"Has he started to talk to you about his feelings yet? What makes him tick. How you make him better?"

"Y..e..a..h... So what about it."

"If you know him, you know Callen doesn't do feelings. It's part of his protective makeup. If he is talking about his feelings with you, something or someone has changed things for him."

"Are you saying that it is me? He wouldn't change for me," she declared.

"Think hard. He already has."

Nell spent the next five minutes looking out the side window, thinking how Callen had dealt with her over the past couple of months. All of a sudden her jaw dropped and she began to shake her head in disbelief. As she hit her forehead with the palm of her hand, she said, "I'm so stupid. Why didn't I see it? No wonder Hetty has rules about it."

"So what have you figured out?"

"He wants to protect me. It's not because he doesn't think that I can do the job. He doesn't want me out in the field because he wants to keep me safe."

"Sounds like him."

"But doesn't he realize that being up in Ops, just watching everything go down, with no way to physically help, is harder on me than the possibility of taking a bullet in the field?"

"Nope. If you are up in Ops, he doesn't have to worry about you. He can focus on what he needs to do."

"God, Jethro, you sound like you agree with that." Nell spit out angrily.

"I've seen it from both sides. Don't know which is worse." Gibbs told her sadly.

"Ha. You're one of the bad-ass NCIS agents. What do you know about the life of a mere tech."

"First, you are not a 'mere tech'. You are a highly trained member of a team."

"But that doesn't help me get out into the field and work toward agent status like I really want."

"From what I hear about you, it will come. Just wait for it."

"That's the hard part. I have already been waiting a long time."

"Okay, you see Callen in the car with us?"

"What do you mean? He's probably getting into a cab right now to fly out to Phoenix."

"Is that what he wanted to do?"

"No. He wanted to be here with us to find Tracy and hunt her down."

"What's the best way to use him right now?"

After thinking a moment, Nell told him, "I get it now. When it's better for me to be in the field, that's when and where it will happen."

"And I didn't even have to Gibbs-smack you."

Nell looked at him in horror, "You wouldn't have, would you?"

He looked at her with a huge smile on his face. "Don't worry. I'll have a talk with him. Show him your side. Maybe even get a point or two into his head."

As he said this, Nell giggled at the thought of Callen getting a Gibbs-smack to get him to listen to her concerns.

. . . . .

 **NCIS Headquarters, Navy Yard, Washington, DC**

Dr. Mallard was waiting for Gibbs when he got off the elevator and headed toward the squad room area. The agent saw him and asked, "Whatcha got for me, Ducky?"

"We got young DiNozzo back to his home. His father assisted me and is staying with his son. I left something to help him sleep, but I don't think that he will be able to come in for the rest of this week. He is just too devastated, Jethro."

"Understandable. Thanks, Ducky."

Doctor Mallard went toward the elevator to go down to the morgue area while Gibbs went and sat at his desk. All the agents in the squad room were looking at Nell as she went to the desk they assigned to her. Feeling their eyes watching her, she looked up in surprise and asked, "What?..."

Gibbs reminded her, "Your case, your lead. What do you want us to do?"

Nell thought for a moment, then channeled her best Hetty interpretation as she said, "Gibbs, you go to Zoe's superiors, see if they can bring any light to what she was doing here. Ellie, go to Zoe's house, see if you can bring me back some fingerprint or DNA evidence, so we can prove who she really is. Tim, you work with Abby to check out Tony's computer to see what programs she accessed and what, if anything, she entered into the machine and the system. I'm gonna go back and check OPS file base for what we have on Tracy. Maybe our combined efforts can stop whatever she is planning."

"When no one else said anything or moved, Gibbs got up and said, "You heard the lady, let's go."

The other two quickly sprang into action, both of them saying, "Yes, Boss," as they scrambled to leave.

Gibbs and Ellie grabbed their keys and headed toward the elevator. Tim called for a tech from Abby's lab to bring a cart up to move Tony's computer to where the goth could work on it. Nell sat at her desk and opened up a link to the files that they had on Tracy back at OSP.

Two hours later everyone was back in the squad room and started to share information with one another. Slow but sure, they were beginning to piece together the life of Zoe Keates. If they kept at it like this, perhaps they might understand what the woman was doing here for the CIA.

Nell felt that there was information missing in the files that she was able to access. She put in a call to Hetty to find if there was anything more.

"Lange here," Hetty answered the call.

"Hetty, have you heard anything from Callen yet? He should have landed by now."

"He has, Ms. Jones. He picked up the warrant at the security desk a little while ago and is headed out to the correctional facility. He should know shortly if it is Tracy Rosetti is really incarcerated there. When he does, he will contact me and I will put in a call to you in MTAC. We can coordinate our efforts then. You may inform the DC team that I will call them in one hour."

"Okay Hetty, I will do that. It will give us a little more time to see if we can find out what she was doing here."

Hetty ended the call and Nell went over to inform Gibbs. She went back to her desk and tried to start working again, but found she was completely distracted. Looking around, once more she was almost overwhelmed by how alien the place appeared compared to Ops. There was no cold, constant flow of air circling around her, intending to keep the massive banks of computers running at a cooler temperature. The lighting did not have the familiar blue glow that seemed to heighten the intensity of the information on the computer screen. She only had one computer to use, two if you counted her personal tablet, when she was used to running four to six computers, each working on a separate task, all at the same time. The file system here was set up by someone else, and Nell had to remind herself constantly not to complain when a bit of information could not be found where she expected to find it. She desperately missed having Eric working next to her, someone with whom she could bounce her ideas, and get responses that she could trust.

Even her small computer station downstairs near their bullpen at OSP headquarters would be preferable to the squad room here. The open architecture of the Spanish mission style building seemed to allow an open flow of ideas, yet provided areas where privacy was permitted. Nell looked up at all the orange on the walls here and wondered how often Deeks would be making comments about 'the great pumpkin' if he would be based here.

Twenty minutes before Hetty's call was supposed to come in, Gibbs got a call about the dead body of a Marine found behind a bar on Slauson Ave in Harvard Park. He told his team to gear up and called for them to head out with him.

Nell wondered how she was going to get into MTAC since Vance was in a meeting with SECNAV and Gibbs and his team would be gone. When she asked the senior agent about it, all he said was "Ask Abbs," as the elevator door closed on them.


	8. Chapter 8

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-6. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 **A/N:** Thanks Susan for the idea for parts of this chapter. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and see things in there that your bunnies have placed there but forgot to tell you about.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 8**

 **. . . . .**

 **NCIS Headquarters, Navy Yard, Washington DC**

Nell sent Hetty a text to explain the situation as she went down to Abby's lab to find her. Nell suggested that Hetty wait until the team was back before she placed the call. Hetty just texted back to her the same thing that Gibbs had said, "Your case, your lead." The little ninja had complete faith in her analyst to take the lead in this mission.

Finding the goth working in her lab, Nell waited outside the glass doors until Abby noticed her. The forensics expert came and opened the door for her and invited her in.

Abby hugged her good morning, and then asked, "What can I help you with, Nell?"

"Gibbs told me to get you to open up MTAC for me. Hetty wants to have a secure call with me in just a few minutes."

A grimace of pain came over Abby's face. "There's no one else that can do it?" she asked.

Vance is at a meeting with SECNAV and Gibbs and his team were called out on a new case. Is there any problem Abby?" Nell explained.

"No, not really. It's just that when I do several iris scans, the big tattoo on my neck seems to interact with the eye scanner and I get a terrible low-grade headache. I just have to have an extra CafPow and use a bunch of aspirins to get rid of it."

"But your spider web tattoo on your neck is on the left side." Don't you use your right eye on the scanner?"

"When they first set up the scanner here, most of my equipment was not linked to the computer screens, and everything had one eyepiece to look through. Since I used my right eye for all of that, I didn't want anything to happen to it by using it for the scanner. Now that pattern is locked in and it's not enough trouble yet for me to want to change it."

The two of them had arrived outside of the door to MTAC, where Abby used the iris scanner beside the door and waited for the click. Nell watched her do that and thought _Cool. Maybe they should get a setup like that for Ops. But then she thought again of how many times they went in and out and the thought of doing that many iris scans seemed to be ridiculous. Besides, Nell knew that her tattoo was in a very delicate place, and the thought of any pain or serious irritation down there sent a cold shudder through her body. Their whole building was secret and more secure than these offices. It was closer to MTAC, and there were not as many outsiders walking through each day._

Abby led Nell to the section of the room where the techs were working. She turned toward Nell and told her, "This is where our geeks hang out. You can pick out an empty computer and send a message to tell them you are ready. I'll come up later and give you the full tour. If you need to contact me, just ask Brett Hansen, he's our head geek."

"Okay Abby, whose the girl with you and how come I was not informed that someone new was coming to work here." Brett asked over his shoulder while he continued to type at his keyboard.

"You can relax, Brett, she is just a temp who may be here for just a couple of days," Abby answered him with a huge smile on her face.

"Does she know the protocols we need to follow or was she just hired straight out of a vocation school?" Brett asked

Abby nudged Nell and indicated that she should give him a cocky answer. Nell smiled and nodded at her, then turned to Brett and said, "Well, unless your protocols are completely different from ours, I think that I should be able to handle it."

"So that means that you must work for NCIS. What office did you work at?"

"I still work at the Los Angeles Office of Special Projects," Nell said emphatically. "I am just on loan to you guys here for a few days."

When Nell mentioned the OSP, the silence in the room became deafening. Everyone turned around and looked at Nell in awe.

Brett finally found his voice and looked at her with one lowered eye, almost as if he didn't believe her. "So I guess you know Eric Beale," He said it as if he presumed that she would answer in the negative.

Nell said with a twinkle in her voice, "I should. Eric sits next to me every day that we are up in Ops. Every once in a while he brings me a package of Oreos to share in our downstairs stations."

Brett looked at her with even more admiration. "That would mean that you are..."

"Nell Jones, one and only," she said, surprised at the recognition she had received.

But Nell was quickly brought back to earth when Brett looked at her and asked, "So... what's it like, working every day with the man who broke the internet?"

 **. . . . .**

Nell was saved from answering his question by the incoming secure message.

Brett looked at Nell and told her, "I don't know what your security level is, and I don't have time now to check it out. But you will have to leave while I check on this call."

Nell just looked at him and said, "I think you will find it is for me. Hetty promised to call me and update me on a case we are working on."

"Henrietta Lange? You are expecting a call from her and you are not quaking in your boots? This I gotta see."

"Just put the call through. Hetty does not like to be kept waiting."

Hetty's image appeared on the plasma, larger than life. "Good afternoon, Ms. Jones. Have you made any progress with this case on your end?"

"We have a couple of leads, Hetty, but nothing definite. Everyone here is still out on a new case that has just come in. Abby and I are still working on it, Abby on the DNA and prints and I have been trying to run down everything we can find out about Zoe."

"Well, the original suspicions you and Mr. Callen had have been confirmed. Mr. Callen picked up the warrant and went out to the correctional facility and demanded that the warden take him to see Tracy Rosetti. At first, Assistant Warden David Gibson refused, saying that the warrant demanded Warden Phillip Bently to produce the prisoner, not him. I think it was the threat of arrest on the charges of impeding a federal investigation that made him change his mind and call out the warden."

Nell giggled and said, "Callen can be scary all by himself. I hope he didn't pull out his gun and wave it in the man's face."

"I don't think it came to that. Agent Callen demanded that he be taken to the cell that was supposed to contain the prisoner. As you both surmised, the cell was empty. Any inquiries into her presence were answered by a couple of DVD programs that were set up by the CIA. Warden Bently was coerced into this. They found that he was an avid customer of photographs and DVDs of naked preteen girls and threatened to expose him. Instead, for participating in this farce, he could keep his freedom and pocket all the money the government was spending on the supposed supervision of a federal prisoner. Mr. Callen has taken him into custody and is awaiting the FBI coming to haul him off to jail."

"Soooo, are you saying that the fingers of the CIA are definitely all over this?"

"It would appear so, Ms Jones. Therefore, I implore you to tread carefully. You have no one from this office there to back you up. I would hope that you could wrap things up as quickly as possible, so you can return home, where you belong. We miss you."

"I will try, Hetty. I've only been here a short time, but I am homesick for Ops."

"Well, back to work, Ms Jones. If anything new comes up, please inform me. Remember, the quicker you get the job done, the sooner you can come home."

"Thank you, Hetty, I'll be in touch."

"Goodbye. Ms Jones."

The screen went dark immediately after these words.

. . . . .

"I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it for myself," Brett said out loud, shaking his head.

"What?" Nell asked, seeing that the young tech was looking directly at her.

"Do you know how scary that little woman is?" he asked her.

"Hetty?...Scary? What makes you think that?"

"Only the fact of her reputation around here as the great dragon lady. Director Vance is usually shaking in his boots every time he has to take one of her calls, and even Agent Gibbs tries everything he can to avoid talking to her. But with you, she was ... nice. I just don't understand it."

"Hetty is always nice, you just have to know how to deal with her."

Brett looked at her with a skeptical eye and said, "Right..." Then turned around and continued with his work.

Nell smiled as she grabbed her tablet and checked the time on her watch. She would have to tell Hetty the observations that Brett had made about her reputation in Washington. But that would have to wait until she got home. Right now she had to let Abby know what Callen had found in Phoenix. Although the young agent would have preferred to continue to work at one of the stations up in MTAC, she didn't want to put Abby through any additional pain with the iris scan. Nell left the secure room and returned to her desk in the squad room _._ ** _  
_**

As she sat down, she wondered how they could ever get enough evidence to prove their case. Then she remembered something she saw years ago when she was setting up the archived electronic files. She called Eric to see if he was up in Ops. When he answered her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Eric, I need your help."

"Sure, Nell, what do you need'

"I need you to go into the archived files and retrieve some information for me."

"Do you remember what file it is?"

"It would be back in 2010, the one where Tracy Rosetti took off with the money from the Spike missiles to Thomas Mason and Sam and Callen had to go down to the Cayman Islands to drag her back. I think it was the end of September or the beginning of October."

"Checking it now. Agh..."

"What's wrong, Eric?"

"Your timing was off, Nell. It was in the middle of October, not the beginning"

"Sorry about that."

Okay, what do you need from the file?"

"If I remember right, the file had a copy of Tracy's fingerprints and her DNA record attached."

"Yup. Correct as usual."

"Can you copy that and send it to my phone here in Washington, like immediately?"

"It's on its way. Anything else?"

"Thanks, Eric. Nothing at the moment. I'll buy you a box of Oreos when I get back."

As soon as the evidence appeared on her phone, Nell hurried down to Abby's lab.

Again she thought she should have called ahead, as she could feel the musical beat on the glass door of Abby's lab. Nell waited until Abby saw her, turned the music down to a moderate roar, and then opened the door for the younger woman.

"Abby, have you come up with an ID on the fingerprints and DNA for Zoe Keates?"

 _"_ It's funny you should ask. I have the fingerprint information for Zoe from ATF, but it is not a match for the woman that was in that hotel room with Tony. The DNA sample should be finished in just a couple of minutes, but I have the sneaking suspicion that won't match the ATF records either."

"That's a bet that I won't take. I've got a set of fingerprints that I would like you to try to match to Zoe's – the one up in the room not the one on record."

"Sure, Nell, where are they."

Nell showed Abby her phone with the fingerprints that Eric had sent to her. Abby transferred them to her computer and ran a comparison. It was a perfect match.

"I've got a copy of the DNA evidence to that you can try to match up when you get your results."

Abby transferred that information also, and then turned to Nell as she waited for Major Mass Spec and asked, "And do you have a name to go along with the winning entry?"

"I sure do. We knew her as Tracy Rosetti, a CIA operative that should be in prison in Phoenix right now/"

"The woman that G. Callen went to check up on?"

"The very same, who appears to be somewhere else than the prison cell in which she was to be confined."

Abby had just run a request for Tracy Rosetti's fingerprints from the prison in Phoenix. When she got an answer, she ran a comparison to the ones in Tony's hotel room. It was clear even to Nell that the two of them did not match.

"I suppose if I requested a copy of the fingerprints from the CIA, I would receive the set that would match the woman that is supposed to be in prison."

"Yup," said Nell, "that would be my guess too.

"So, where did you get the copy of the matching fingerprints?" Abby inquired.

"Whenever we take someone down in one of our ops, we archive a copy of their DNA and fingerprints in our files if we can. It makes a lot more work for me, but every once in a while, we get a case where we get a hit from our archives that would have never come up in the active files. Since they are coded to Hetty's specs, they are not easily accessible by just anyone. I remember going through this file when I archived it."

"That may be something that we might want to start doing. We often get the run around by the other agencies here in Washington."

"I don't know how you cope with all these other agencies. We usually don't have to deal with them, or just simply ignore them out in Los Angeles,"

"They're kinda hard to ignore when they're almost sitting on top of each other here,"

"Yeah, and I suppose that nothing would stand up in court. It would be like a he said, he said case if they would even allow it to get to court. I've had my own dealings with the CIA."

Just then the elevator door opened up and Gibbs and the rest of his team came walking in. "Abbs, Nell, whataya got for me?"

Abby pointed to Nell, who offered the update. "Callen arrived in Phoenix and wanted to see Tracy. As we thought, the cell was empty. The CIA had set that up. Abby ran Zoe's fingerprints and found they didn't match the records from ATF. I requested Eric send me a copy of Tracy's fingerprints that we had archived. Bingo. That's who it was. Now all we have to do is find out why she was here doing what she did."


	9. Chapter 9

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-6. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 **A/N:** Thanks Susan for the idea for parts of this chapter. It sure helps to be able to bounce these ideas off someone else and see things in there that your bunnies have placed there but forgot to tell you about. Last chapter. Thanks everyone for reading this. A small Epilogue will follow tying everything together.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Chapter 9**

 **. . . . .**

 **NCIS Headquarters, Navy Yard, Washington DC**

Nell turned to Gibbs and asked him, "So, do you know how Tony met Zoe; were they partnered up together or did they work on a case that went a long time?"

"Tony once told me that they were rookies together on the Philadelphia Police Department. He moved on to Baltimore Police Department and lost track of her."

"I wonder if that was when she started working for the CIA," Nell started thinking out loud.

"That was right around 2000. I met Tony a short time after that. It was a little while before I could get him to switch over to NCIS."

"She was Tracy Rosetti of the CIA before that then, because Callen told me that he was in Uzbekistan with her in 1998. She was recalled from the field after they made their way to Islamabad in Pakistan. Tracy was flown back to Langley, supposedly for intensive debriefing and further training. I just wonder if she was temporarily 'furloughed' or if she was on assignment."

Gibbs thought back to the days when he had to work with the company. "It's really hard to say. They could have shown that Callen's partner was terminated. But then they could have given her an entirely new existence."

"The records that I found showed that Zoe joined ATF," Nell offered, " and continues to be one of their agents to this day."

"That's where Tony met up with her again," Gibbs continued. "We were investigating a jihadist group that targeted a Navy SEAL. Tim went in as a potential explosive specialist. ATF was also investigating the group because they were looking for an explosive specialist. Tony and Zoe reconnected and started to talk."

"He hadn't been himself for a long time," Tim observed. "He got too close to Jeanne Benoit while he was undercover trying to apprehend her father, René Benoit, an international arms dealer. It ripped him apart when he told her that Tony DiNardo, the alias he was using at the time, was all an act and there was no truth to him at all."

Ellie had never heard about this. It always seemed to be part of the team history that no one would ever want to talk about. "So, was it just an act?" she asked Tim.

"Sadly, no. He was lying when he said that. Then she said it would have been better if she had never even met him, as she walked away. It took him a long, long, time to get over it."

"God, this thing with Zoe is really gonna kill him." Bishop wondered how she would feel if Jake would do something that would totally destroy their marriage.

"But Tony didn't appear to be someone who would switch his affections that quickly, from one woman to the other," Nell observed.

"He didn't," Tim stated. "About two years ago we had a case where a soldier was going to make a 3 D-Printed weapon and smuggle it in past the security systems. The lieutenant wanted to kill off the leader of IPAC, the Israeli Peaceful Arab Coalition, to thwart the negotiations that were being held here in Washington. Zoe was brought in to help us with the case and work with Tony and the team. We all noticed how close the two of them were getting. Tony, of course, denied it, but he wasn't that enthusiastic in that denial."

Nell's mind was working completely out of the box. "You don't think...? God, I wonder if they really would have gone that far?"

Gibbs just looked at her, waiting for her to continue. When she didn't, he exclaimed, "Nell..."

"With Tracy showing up in Los Angeles and trying to get back into Callen's life, and Zoe working on Tony here in Washington, you don't suppose that the CIA was trying to plant a mole into NCIS, either here or on the West Coast?"

Ellie was the first to respond, "They wouldn't do that, would they? They can't do that."

Gibbs just looked at her as he said, "They could and they would, if they thought that it was something that would help them out at the agency. They are not beyond blackmail and coercion among people here in the US."

Tim wondered what Zoe could be doing with the latest case. "The last case that she worked on with Tony ended a couple of weeks ago. Two Marines, Corporal Darrell Glover and PFC Darius Guevara, were suspected of trying to buy drugs from Rafe Velasco, a member of Los Seres sin rostro [The Faceless Ones], which is an offshoot of the Norte del Valle Cartel. The drug deal down at the docks went bad, for everyone, Velasco must have pulled a gun on the Marines, and as they struggled for it, all three of them were fatally shot."

Nell had a puzzled look on her face. "It sounds like a simple open and shut case. Why would she have to help work it?"

"The two Marines were part of the unit that serviced Marine One, the helicopter that POTUS used. There was an uproar in Congress about the military keeping a closer watch on these men." Ellie disclosed.

"Later we also found out that the gun that was involved was part of a shipment that was distributed by the ATF, as part of the 'Fast and Furious' program. These guns went missing from ATF control and there are strong rumors from both sides of the border that they were hijacked for the cartels by the ... wait for it now ..."

Nell smirked as she said, "Let me guess... the CIA?"

Tim laughed, along with the others, as he said, "Wow, now I see why you are a political analyst."

"Do you have the files on that case?" Nell asked.

"They should be in the computer," Tim said as she sat down at her desk and fired up her computer, "Go to the 'Case File' folder, then 'Pending Cases', because this case has not been archived yet, There should be a folder in that one titled 'Guns and Drugs', File number 3, 4, or 5, I forget."

"It's 4," Nell replied, as her fingers flew over the keyboard. "Got it. Now, do you have a clean thumb drive I can use to copy these files?"

"Sure, how big," Tim asked.

"I don't know, do the files take up more than four gigs of space?" she asked.

"They shouldn't," he answered, opening a drawer to his desk and pulling out the requested drive.

Nell plugged it into the USB port and copied the files. Then she looked up at Gibbs and asked, "Can we go up into MTAC and so I can send these files to Eric out in Los Angeles. I wanna make sure he gets them, but that the whole thing is encrypted without touching the files."

Gibbs looks at Tim and shrugs his shoulders, wondering what she's talking about.

"Nell?" Tim looked at her with a question in his eyes too.

"I'm just worried that she may have placed a worm or something else in it to corrupt the files." she explained.

"I could check that out for you," he maintained.

"No disrespect, Tim," she reassured him, 'but I sit next to one of the best computer experts in the world. Every day he amazes me with his skills. Since this is partially something that we are involved in out in LA, I want to make sure that the best available person was working on it. In my mind, it is Eric Beale. If you want, I will make you a copy and let you work with it. I do suggest that you use a computer that is not connected to the NCIS network when you do, though."

Tim looked at Gibbs and told him, "She's probably right, boss."

"What are you waiting for? Do it," he ordered.

 **. . . . .**

About two hours later a call came into MTAC from Eric in Ops. "You were right to be concerned, Nell. I found there was a 'Snooper/Sweeper' app that was added to these files. Basically, the program looks for whatever parameters you set for it, runs through all your files and singles out the ones that you are looking for. It attaches to them so that the file opens normally but after about fifteen seconds, the app starts to clean all the data from the whole file and shreds it so it can't be reconstructed. It would quickly disappear and you would be left with absolutely nothing. I cleaned all the files that you sent to me and sent you a repair app to fix ... "

"...the DC computer files. Thanks, Eric. I knew I could count on you. Nell answered just before the screen went dark.

As they walked back down to the squad room from MTAC, Tim asked Nell, "Do you do that a lot with Eric?"

She started to blush as she asked, "What? Finish off his sentences? Yeah, I guess I do. Our minds just sorta work in the same patterns, so it happens."

"That's why I find it so strange that you came here with Callen. With Eric, you seem to have the same background, the same interests, the same skills. From the little contact I've had with Callen, you two seem to have little in common."

"You are right about Eric and me, and that's part of the problem. We are too much alike. Eric is way too much of a geek for me. I like Callen's 'bad boy' image and once we got over the age difference thing and if I'm worthy enough for him and he's worthy enough for me self-doubts, we hit it off just fine. We sorta complete each other. I keep him grounded and he expands my 'safe' zone. Win win."

Tim just smiled, knowing exactly what she was saying. He encountered the same thing in his relationship with Delilah, just in different areas.

Gibbs met them in the squad room and asked, "Is it fixed?"

Nell plugged the thumb drive into the computer, ran the help app that Eric had placed on it, and waited a minute before telling him, "It should be now."

Gibbs ordered Tim, "Try it."

He opened up one of the files and it acted normally. "Working, boss," he reported, as he continued to work on his computer.

Nell turned to Gibbs and maintained, "I guess we now know what her mission was. The first person to touch those files would watch all your evidence go down the drain."

"Well, we still had the gun and bullets, and both Abby and Ducky could testify to their usage, in this case," Tim explained. "But it would make the case more difficult, and maybe some parts even impossible to prove."

Nell scrunched her brow, deep in thought. She looked up at Tim and asked, "Zoe did a disappearing act; she tried to make the files disappear. You don't think she would try to do the same thing with the weapon. Do you?"

"I don't see how she could do that. The weapon is being stored in the evidence room under lock and key. You need to sign in and out to look at anything in there, and you can't leave with any of the evidence, unless you have a court order requesting it."

"Could you just indulge me and make sure it is still there? Please?" Nell had tilted her head and gave Tim the full intensity of her sultry amber eyes, that even an impassive man like Callen could not resist."

"Just do it, Tim," Gibbs ordered. "I don't want Callen coming back here to find his girlfriend making goo-goo eyes at one of my agents. You would not like the results, either. Trust me on that."

"On it, boss," Tim acknowledged, as he pulled out his phone and called down to Abby's lab.

"Hey, Abby, I know that this might be a strange request, but could you go over to the evidence locker and see if the weapon for case number M-1021-03 is still there? ... I know it should be there waiting for the trial ... Gibbs told me to ask you. ... Thanks, Abs."

"She's gonna check it for us," he said, as he put his phone away.

"Thank you," said Nell.

 **. . . . .**

The elevator dinged and the door opened to disclose their frustrated forensic scientist come running into the squad room.

"Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs," she blurted out, completely out of breath.

Gibbs placed a ghosted kiss on her cheek as he told her, "I take it you've got something for me, Abs. Take a deep breath, and then tell us, slowly."

"Gibbs, the gun you wanted me to find, it wasn't there. And nobody went down there to look at it since it was logged in." Abby assured him.

"Well, where did it..." Gibbs started to ask her.

"Wait, Gibbs, there's more. I asked to see all the records concerning that weapon, and it appears that Tony authorized it to be destroyed. The electronic authorization says it is no longer needed for trial evidence."

"And when did he make this authorization?" Gibbs wondered.

"The timestamp has it right in the middle of his wedding reception, when all the guests were dancing, where he was constantly being watched by over a hundred people."

An angry look came over Gibbs' face as he spat out the name of the woman he knew placed the order, "Zoe!"

"It's okay, Gibbs," Abby continued. "I stopped it. It was due to be destroyed with some other weapons later today. I got them to return it to the evidence locker. I have checked on it and it is the one we need for the case. I also had them put a note on that package that either you or i have to be informed if anyone wants to check on it."

"Thanks, Abs, I'll get you another Caf-Pow just for that," the senior agent said with a twinkle in his eye.

Abby just smiled and bounced her way back to the elevator. She knew Gibbs would find her in her lab later today to give her the treat he promised.

Nell looked at Gibbs and said, "She must have done it when she told your other techs that she was trying to upgrade her honeymoon package. If she was working from Tony's computer, then it would give Tony's authorization, especially if she would have his passcode."

"So we know who, sorta, and how, and have a good idea about the why. The only thing that is left is to find her and catch her. That ain't gonna be easy." Gibbs admitted.

"What about the CIA, boss? We gonna let them get away with it?" Tim asked.

"We cleaned up the mess they tried to make. We can't prove anything in court. They know that we know. We just have to run a tighter ship from now on." Gibbs summed up the entire case.


	10. Epilogue

**=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **G. Callen is invited to an event he never thought would happen, the marriage ceremony of Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. When he found out who the bride was, he couldn't believe it. Could he find out what was really going on before Tony sings the 'Wedding Bell Blues'?**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-6. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

A/N: Thank you, everyone, who has read, followed, favorited, or reviewed this story. I especially loved the PMs I got where people talked about these characters as if they were real. This epilogue ties a few loose ends together and wipes the screen clean to start another fantasy. Will the paths of the major players in this adventure cross paths again? Only time and the plot bunnies will tell. Until that possibility, enjoy the ride.

 **Whose Wife is She Anyway**

 **Epilogue**

 **. . . . .**

Nell booked a flight to Los Angeles later that day. She enjoyed her status as a temporary agent at the MCRT, but she was truly homesick for the comfort of Ops and all of her friends back there. It was fun in Washington, but she still felt so out of place. And being placed in charge of an investigation? Maybe with a lot more learning at the feet of their great tactician, she might try it again someday.

On the way to the airport, Gibbs once more told her, "If you ever wanted to transfer to Washington, I would be glad to have you join my team permanently, as an agent, as an analyst, whatever you wanted to do."

"Thanks for the offer, Gibbs," She answered, "but I really have to decline your offer, at least for the moment. As you can tell, I am used to working with people who think and act outside the box, more like I do. Unfortunately, you and your people are way too much by the book. Nothing wrong with that, but it's just not me."

"I don't know where Hetty found you, but you and Callen are perfect for each other. When you see him, please tell him that I approve."

Nell thought she knew what he was talking about, and she wondered if she should relay that message to Callen.

 **. . . . .**

Callen drove out to LAX to pick up Nell. Hetty wanted to send a car for her, and her senior agent demanded that he be the one to do it. The man had been extremely moody and angry with himself ever since he confirmed that Tracy Rosetti was not locked up in prison. He just went on and on about how he should have slapped the cuffs on her in the receiving line, and to hell with Tony and the rest of the guests. The score now stood: Tracy/Zoe two and Callen one. There might be a good chance that in both their lines of work, that might be the final score. He would have lost, and how he hated to loose.

His disposition changed immediately when he saw his pixie. He forgot all the little things that he had lost with Tracy when he realized everything that he had gained with Nell. It was no contest at all because it was never a game with them. She had captured his heart, and he knew it would be a lifetime sentence.

 **. . . . .**

It was the middle of the week before the Washington office received an answer to their international BOLO sent to NCIS field offices throughout the world. Kevin Harris, the deputy operations manager in the London field office had persuaded a contact he had in MI6 to let him run a facial recognition on incoming passengers at Heathrow airport for the time in question. He found an image of a woman matching Zoe's description exiting the British Airways concourse on a flight from the US. Further investigation showed that her British passport, issued in the name of Priscilla Uttley, was for a seventy-three-year-old woman from Brighton in East Sussex, who had died three years earlier. She picked up no luggage and climbed into a car that showed no license plates, at the airport entrance. From there on, she completely disappeared. They would continue to watch for her, but right now it appeared to be a hopeless cause.

 **. . . . .**

Both Glen Marsh and Robyn King were called into Director Vance's office.

"The two of you realize why you are here, correct?" Vance asked.

"Yes, sir," Glen responded. "Both of us allowed unauthorized personnel to use NCIS assets. We should have never allowed Zoe to use Tony's computer."

"To make sure that the two of you understand how important that is, each of you will be furloughed for two weeks, Maybe you can use that time to think about all the damage that could have been done to our systems if someone really wanted to sabotage them, or all the information that could have been compromised and made available to our enemies."

"Yes, sir," both of them said.

"Your furloughs start now, dismissed."

They turned and left the office.

Glen went home and wondered how he was going to tell his wife that their finances were going to take a big hit with the hours he would be missing.

Robyn was less worried about it. She knew that Holly Webster would have to pick up her hours. Holly really hated filling in for her, because all Robyn's hours were on the weekend. Holly was a party animal and spent every weekend wherever she could kick up her heels. She would demand that Robyn would pay her back by taking her hours and extending her weekends. Since she would want Robyn to repay her, two for one, Robyn would actually come out ahead on this disciplinary action.

 **. . . . .**

Robyn King walked out of the Navy Yard office and continued until she came to a cafe selling tacos that had seating on the patio. Looking around to see if she had been followed, she placed her order and sat with her back to the building. She took out her burner phone from a hidden inside pocket of her purse and dialed a number. Waiting just a moment for the pickup, she started speaking in a low voice.

-"It's me."-

-"A two-week suspension."-

-"The LA bitch undid everything."-

-"No, they don't suspect anything."-

-"They have no idea where she is."-

-"Understand, sir. Will initiate the protocol."-

With that, she ended the conversation, looked around again, and contentedly bit into her taco. _NCIS just does not know who they are dealing with,_ she thought. _Get rid of one and another is waiting in the wings to replace them._

 **. . . . .**

Robyn did not see the man on the other side of the street, sitting at a table with a menu hiding the device that was recording her call. _She has no idea that we are on to her,_ he thought to himself with a smirk. _We will have to play her carefully so she does not go running off like the last one did._

 **FINISH**

 **=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**


End file.
